Answering the call: Small police departments in east Erie team up to attract new hires

There are benefits to a career in law enforcement in small communities, say the chiefs of three eastern Erie County police departments.

The officers get to know the community's residents better, as well as those they may deal with on a regular basis, Lawrence Park Police Chief John Morell said.

Community members who have formed those close relationships with the officers tend to like the police and will help them out through such measures as calling in tips, Wesleyville Police Chief Robert Buzanowski said.

The residents of small communities and their police officers also work together to identify and solve problems in the community, North East Police Chief Sean Lam said.

But a challenge for small police departments, particularly in Lawrence Park, North East and Wesleyville, has been in finding people interested in applying for a job on the force.

Each of the three departments — Wesleyville has seven full-time officers, North East has eight full-time officers and Lawrence Park has nine full-time officers — currently has an opening. But filling them has been difficult.

Lam noted that, eight years ago, the North East department would average 15 to 30 applicants each time a position was posted. A few weeks ago, an announcement about an opening on the borough police force drew no applicants, he said.

Fewer people are applying for police jobs these days and, locally, those who go through the police academy and go through the police testing process through the Northwest Pennsylvania Regional Police Test Consortium tend to get snatched up by the larger police departments like the Erie Bureau of Police and the Millcreek Township Police Department, the chiefs say.

Of the 15 cadets who graduated from the Mercyhurst University Municipal Police Training Academy on Wednesday, four will join the Erie Bureau of Police next week, one is expected to begin work on the Erie School District Police Department and three others are expected to be hired onto departments outside of Erie County, according to the school.

There are 21 people registered for the next police academy, which begins July 5.

Another challenge for the three departments, the chiefs said, is retaining the officers they hire. In some cases a department will spend the time and money to get an officer onto their department, only to see the officer leave to take a job with a bigger department, Morell said.

The Lawrence Park, North East and Wesleyville departments all eliminated their part-time officer positions and are saving money because they were regularly losing those officers to full-time positions elsewhere, the chiefs said.

The pay, at least the starting salary, isn't much different than what the bigger departments are paying. The starting salary for an officer in Lawrence Park, North East of Wesleyville ranges between $46,000 and $54,000, according to the chiefs. Erie, in comparison, has a starting salary of $51,461 for an officer, which grows to $78,906 after 48 months, according to information in the bureau's most recent online recruitment page.

In an effort to better attract police candidates to their departments, Lawrence Park, North East and Wesleyville are teaming up to do their own police testing. The program, which will run through Lawrence Park's civil service commission, will conduct written and physical agility testing, and each department will do its own interviews of those who pass the test, Morell said.

The departments plan to hold their first test later this summer.

Lawrence Park has done its own police testing, while North East and Wesleyville had generated its candidates through the Northwest Pennsylvania Regional Police Test Consortium. The consortium, through Mercyhurst University, does police testing for a number of law enforcement agencies in and around Erie County, including the Erie and Millcreek police departments, the Erie County Prison and the sheriff's departments in Erie, Venango and Warren counties.

The consortium's next test is on Aug. 5.

Lam said the move makes sense, as the three departments work closely together and pool their resources for things such as joint training. The hope under the testing partnership is that they will attract a significant number of applicants who want to work on a smaller department, he said.

"It's our way of creative problem-solving," Morell said.

Buzanowski said an added attraction for those who may apply for their testing is the obvious close working relationship the three departments have. Another aspect of a small department is that all of the officers in the department and their neighboring departments get to know each other better, as they regularly work together through training or on mutual aid calls, he said.

A challenge everywhere

Lawrence Park, North East and Wesleyville aren't alone in feeling the pinch of attracting people to police jobs and retaining them once hired.

The Erie County Sheriff's Office is up to its current complement of full-time deputies, but has dealt with high turnover in recent years, Sheriff Chris Campanelli said.

"We've gone through over 55 deputies in 5 1/2 years," he said.

The Millcreek Township Police Department is at its full complement of 66 officers. But Police Chief Carter Mook said when he recently filled a position, he had to go deeper down the list of candidates on the consortium list to find someone interested in joining the township department than he ever has before.

Mook recalled that, at a conference he attended with leaders from law enforcement agencies across the country last year, conference attendees were asked to raise their hands if their departments were fully staffed. His hand was the only one that went up.

"Some were down 10%, 30%, even 50%," Mook said.

Bill Hale, the director of the Mercyhurst Municipal Police Training Academy, said when he started years ago the academy had classes in the 30s. The numbers have declined, but they are coming back a little bit, Hale said.

"But it's slow," he said.

Because the pool of police candidates is smaller, the competition for those candidates is rigorous, Hale said. He said representatives of departments from outside of Erie County show up at the academy all the time, wanting to talk to the cadets.

"I tell them half the class is taken," Hale said.

He said he even received a call once from a police department in Washington that was looking for candidates. The department was offering to pay the candidate's expenses, as well as a sign-on bonus, Hale said.

"They were just begging for people," he said.

Aid for a statewide problem

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro visited the academy in late March to meet with cadets and to discuss a budget proposal that would provide a three-year income tax credit worth up to $2,500 annually to recruit new police officers, as well as teachers and nurses.

Shapiro said Pennsylvania was short just over 1,200 municipal police officers and that the Pennsylvania State Police, which in the 1990s had 10,000 cadets enrolled annually in its training program, now averages 1,000 cadets.

"We simply do not have enough police officers to fill the vacant spots before we even think about making additions beyond that," Shapiro said during the visit.

More: In Erie County, Shapiro pitches tax credit to recruit police cadets, teachers, nurses

Shapiro was also proposing a $16.4 million investment to pay for four additional state police cadet training classes, which he said could put as many as 400 new troopers on the highways and in rural communities that rely on the agency for law enforcement protection.

Morell said there are a combination of things that he believes play a factor in the drop in police recruits. They include societal issues and the high stress level that police officers work under.

Shift work, and the impact that has on family life, also comes into play, Lam said.

"We are also being asked to do more with less, but we accept the challenges," Morell added.

Erie's push to attract candidates, add diversity

The Erie Bureau of Police is set to swear in four new officers on Monday, its third group of new officers hired since December.

The new hires will boost the city police complement to 190, which is four officers short of its 194-member complement.

Erie has hired a number of recent Mercyhurst police academy graduates over the past year and has attracted officers from other law enforcement agencies to fill vacancies created through retirements and positions created when the department's complement was increased from 175. The increase, supported through a portion of the city's American Rescue Plan allocation, was done to allow the city police bureau to, among other things, resurrect a juvenile crime unit and a crisis unit.

The bureau over the past few years has also pushed to improve diversity on the force. It appointed Lt. Tom Lenox as its full-time recruitment officer, and Lenox has been working to attract more candidates to the city police force through efforts including community presentations, visits to military bases and other police academies, and stops at college campuses.

Lenox said he believes Erie police have overcome the challenges they and other law enforcement agencies nationwide faced in the backlash following the death in 2020 of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed at the hands of police in Minneapolis.

But the issue that is affecting recruitment now, particularly in recruiting officers on other police departments to apply for an Erie police job, is whether those positions might be in danger of being eliminated down the line, Lenox said.

When Erie City Council approved a portion of the city's American Rescue Plan funding for use in hiring more police officers, a separate resolution was passed in June 2022 stipulating that the Erie Bureau of Police's complement could not exceed 175 members by Jan. 1, 2024. That resolution was rescinded in a separate council vote in September, but Lenox said the concerns are still there for some who have been approached about signing up to take the Erie police test about whether a new hire might face a layoff down the road given the recent events in city council.

"Everyone wanted to come here, make the best money, get into the things they want to get into as an officer. Now, they are especially paying attention to what is going on in Erie," he said.

Lenox said while it's frustrating that he can't answer the questions some candidates are asking, the good news is that 30 or so of the people who have signed up to take the consortium police test on Aug. 5 were people he lined up. He said he expects more to sign up for the test before the deadline, which Hale said is at the end of June.

"You've got to stay the course," Lenox said "If it's down this year, you've got to focus on the next cycle and do an uptick and not wait until you get into the (hiring) season. You've got to get ahead of it sooner. But I think we'll bounce back."

Contact Tim Hahn at thahn@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNhahn.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: East Erie police departments team up to attract new candidates to job