A California city is offering more than $100,000 as a starting salary for police officers but is still struggling to fill in manpower gaps as the state and the whole country faces a shortage in law enforcement personnel.
Police in Alameda, California, are offering $113,650 as a starting salary and a huge $75,000 signing bonus, the biggest in the country, in desperate efforts to attract new police officers.
Despite the higher salary offers, the police department is still not getting the numbers it needs.
Joel Aylworth, a retired San Francisco police officer, said the staffing crisis in the police force is due to the support for anti-police political messaging and the very high cost of living in California, for which even a $100,000 salary may not be enough.
“This has been building up for over 10 years,” Mr. Aylworth said to FOX News.
“I can remember back in Occupy Wall Street, that’s like almost 15 years ago, where this anti-police, vitriolic narrative [was] being pushed, on and on.”
The more recent “Defund the police” movement after the 2020 riots on the heels of the in-custody death of George Floyd was also a big blow to the flow of government money to police departments across the nation.
“If you want me to risk my life, it’s one thing to pay me but it’s another to respect me,” Dave Smith, a veteran police officer, law enforcement trainer, and public speaker, told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Smith and other law enforcement representatives say defunding police departments hurt the communities they served and destroyed morale among officers.
The partial defunding that many police stations experienced resulted in staffing shortages that have persisted throughout 2023.
The New York Police Department has a shortfall of 4,000 officers, according to Betsy Smith, a National Police Association spokesperson. She said Phoenix recently held a police recruiting event that in the past drew 1,000 applicants; this time, 35 people showed up.
She said police staffing in Tucson, Arizona, has fallen to a level not seen since the mid-1970s.
Minneapolis, where the “defund” movement began, is 100 officers below what is required by its city charter requires, according to reports. The city is where Mr. Floyd died on May 25, 2020. Floyd’s death was used in messaging that fueled the start of the “Defund the police” movement.
Cost of Living
Mr. Aylworth said that even a $200,000 salary wasn’t enough in San Francisco.
“I told my wife, ‘We will never be able to afford a home here’ because I just can’t catch up,” he said.
“The pandemic really opened people’s eyes that they can move to states like Texas, have a better quality of life and make pretty much similar money.”
California has lowered physical fitness standards and allowed non-citizens to become police officers, though this does not include illegal immigrants.
“They’re desperate,” Mr. Aylworth said, adding that his superiors were warning about this looming crisis years ago, and that Americans are now not motivated to become police officers.
“Instead of ‘Go out and catch the bad guy,’ they’re being told, ‘Go move the homeless,’” he explained. “And there’s so much oversight at all the departments right now, from complaints to the DA, that they feel very restricted. Their purpose is being diminished daily.”
Given the high level of risk for losing one’s life during police anti-drug and other operations, Mr. Aylworth said that there are “a lot of benefits to not being a police officer, and that’s why these guys aren’t chomping at the bits.”
Similar incentives are being offered by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in August 2023 that, “Our police department, just like other major city police departments, is enduring a hiring and retention crisis … The LAPD sworn force dipped below 9,000 for the first time since 2002.”
According to Ms. Bass’s office, the police department is expected to lose hundreds more officers in the coming year due to retirements and resignations. Since 2017, the police department has lost more than 430 officers in their first year and a half of duty. A significant number of officers join other agencies before serving for 10 years.
To attract recruits, the LAPD reached a contract with the government under which the starting pay for a new recruit will begin at $86,193, a 12.6 percent increase from the previous starting salary of $74,020. Additionally, the deal provided four raises of 3 percent over four years.
New officers from the Police Academy who remain with the police department for at least three years will earn $15,000 in bonuses, while officers who transfer to the department from other agencies and stay for at least three years will earn $20,000 in bonuses.
By 2027, the starting salary for new recruits will hit $94,000.
Local politicians have criticized such a package, saying that allocating so much money to one police department will starve other police departments.
But with crime rising in California and with a great number of resignations over the last years, police departments seem unable to solve the problems they are facing.
Many smaller police departments have already closed, being in much worse shape than those in the big cities due to a lack of monetary resources to pay salaries. As a result, their communities are often relying on police departments miles away.