BOOKER T. HODGES
POLICE CHIEF
BLOOMINGTON (POPULATION 89,298)

The City of Bloomington has a long history of having a trusting relationship with our community, a supportive governing body, and a positive internal work culture among city staff. Despite this history, the Bloomington Police Department (BPD) had approximately 10% of our sworn peace officers leave the department in late 2021 and early 2022. In addition, we were unable to fully fill existing vacancies in both our sworn and civilian ranks.

When I was sworn in as chief of police in April 2022, the first thing I did was meet with the superintendent of the public school district and conduct 30-minute, one-on-one meetings with every BPD employee. The second thing I did was temporarily change the department’s mission, vision, and value statements to simply one word: respect.

The individual meetings led to the implementation of several significant organizational changes based on staff feedback. Some of the changes included updating the department’s fitness center, purchasing equipment staff said they needed to do their jobs more effectively, and updating our policy and procedure manual, including allowing facial hair and tattoos.

The most significant changes we made were done by conducting a project with our community and department that developed a set of shared core values to increase and maintain our mutual trust and our increased communication efforts.

Those two changes have paid dividends as far as our recruiting and retention have gone.

Effectively communicating our core value of respect, both internally and externally, has given our employees a sense of purpose and focus, which has led to them being some of our biggest recruiters. Externally, it has brought people to our department who are value driven and are looking to serve their community.

We are currently fully staffed and if I were to offer any tips to those looking to recruit or retain officers, I would offer the following:

• Meet with your staff and be willing to implement some changes you may not agree with.
• Establish a clear set of core values, as this will become your brand and, if effectively communicated, will draw purpose-driven individuals to your organization.
• Be willing to go into places you would normally not consider to recruit police officers. Most communities have a local store, gas station, or warehouse where people are just waiting to become police officers, they just have to be asked.

TARIQ AL-RIFAI
CITY ADMINISTRATOR AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR
PAYNESVILLE (POPULATION 2,449)

It has been a challenging environment to recruit officers over the past few years. We were fully staffed when I joined the city in 2020. However, normal rates of turnover over the course of 2020 and 2021 led to the police department being understaffed, and the pool of applicants was just not there anymore.

Paynesville is not unique in facing this issue. If you look at the number of open positions in police departments today, they are at a record high. The last time I checked, 161 agencies were hiring across the state. To my knowledge, it has never been this high.

What caused this shrinking pool of applicants?

There are two main reasons: First, there has been an increasing number of officers retiring and leaving the profession. Second, there are fewer students entering the schools, leading to a smaller pool of new applicants.

What has your city done to try to attract and recruit officers?

With 161 agencies hiring, we needed to be creative in how we attract new officers. Many other cities were coming up with creative ways to do this as well.

For starters, we got together with the Law Enforcement Labor Services (LELS), the police union, and discussed the need to increase our pay scale following a wage study. This, however, would not be enough to attract the type of applicants we were looking for. As a city of 2,500 residents, we cannot compete on pay with larger cities.

In addition to raising wages, which put us in a more competitive position with the surrounding communities, we established a sabbatical program (the first in the state). Officers who have been with the city for three years will take a one-month paid sabbatical during their fourth year.

Changes were also made to paid time off, allowing new officers to take time off after completing their field training, typically three months, instead of waiting until they complete their one-year probation.

And finally, we’ve been paying more attention to promoting our community and the lifestyle opportunities in the area, such as the great school system and recreational activities.