Battling police shortages, Hampton Roads cities consider bonuses to lure officers to come — or stay

Virginia Beach police made an offer in July to the state’s certified officers: Come work for us and we’ll give you $5,000.

The hiring bonus was for about 100 vacancies the department has struggled to fill. Officials there said it was one innovative way to recruit and retain qualified police.

But outside Virginia Beach, some are crying foul, including Chesapeake Councilman Robert Ike, who called the move “selfish” as many local police agencies are struggling to retain and recruit.

To try to keep officers from leaving, Chesapeake City Manager Chris Price has a proposal to match the Virginia Beach incentive — a $5,000 “retention” bonus. It will likely be on the agenda for Council members at their next meeting Aug. 10.

“I am stunned Virginia Beach would do this to the other localities knowing that we’re all hurting,” said Ike, who served as an officer in the city for 11 ½ years and expressed support for the retention bonus. Chesapeake, which employs 364 officers, is down 41, according to a department spokesman.

Agencies across the state are having a hard time filling vacancies, said Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police.

Officers are retiring or leaving for other work, driven in part by better pay in neighboring jurisdictions. Schrad pointed to other reasons such as dramatically smaller applicant pools and agencies performing more rigorous psychological evaluations, hoping to weed out those with anger management issues or biases.

The pandemic’s toll on people’s mental health has also led many to consider careers that provide a healthy work-life balance, said Bernadette Holmes, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Norfolk State University. Plus, the social justice movement of the past year has placed greater scrutiny on police, which has likely dissuaded some people — particularly candidates of color — from applying for law enforcement jobs.

Densely populated departments with staffing shortages from northern Virginia to Richmond to Hampton Roads often compete for the same law enforcement applicants, Schrad said.

Norfolk, for example, has 158 openings with 618 total sworn officers, a department spokesman said. The city does not offer hiring bonuses.

About 37 Chesapeake police officers expressed interest in a Virginia Beach transfer, according to Diana Tharp, who retired from Chesapeake Police Department as a sergeant three years ago and is now president of the Chesapeake Fraternal Order of Police.

Tharp said she heard that number from someone inside the department and was unsure whether any have been accepted. A department spokesman did not confirm that number and referred questions to a city spokesman, who declined to answer.

Tharp, who said she worries about vacancies because they might affect calls for service, met twice with Price and two other officers to talk about the Virginia Beach bonus. During a recent council meeting, Price pointed to a paraphrased quote in a WAVY-TV news report about the neighboring city “cherry picking” the area’s best and brightest officers.

“We don’t intend to allow that to happen,” Price told the council.

But Brian Luciano, president of the Virginia Beach Police Benevolent Association and an Oceanfront officer, said the department is simply trying to think of creative ways to be competitive.

“What we’ve been doing is not working,” Luciano said in an interview.

The department has been down about 100 officers for the past decade, driven by recruiting struggles as well as officers leaving to work in other cities or for a federal agency — such as the FBI — that offers better pay.

He said for years Virginia Beach has lost officers to neighboring jurisdictions — local, state and federal.

“I’m glad we’re pushing back against that,” Luciano said.

Hiring bonuses are common not only for police departments, but for much of the private sector “as many businesses are feeling the struggles of having a diminished workforce,” Virginia Beach police spokeswoman Linda Kuehn wrote in an email. She said there are departments across the country offering far more than the Beach bonus.

Virginia Beach has 94 unfilled positions, though 52 people are seeking certification to be hired. The department has a total of about 800 officers.

The $5,000 bonus is being offered to in-state and out-of-state certified officers with one year of experience, Kuehn wrote. Those who accept get half upon their employment and the rest after training.

Chesapeake city leaders are finishing their proposal for a retention bonus. It’s not yet clear, for example, what would preclude an officer from taking the bonus and then leaving for another job — or the profession altogether.

Later this year, Chesapeake plans to complete a study that will look at how its salaries, benefits and staff structure compare with other municipalities and the private sector.

Ike said he has struggled with low pay as Chesapeake cop. When first hired in the 1980s, his salary was $16,000. By the time he was a field training officer 11 years later, he was making $27,000. He learned that the new officers he was training were starting at a salary just $2,000 dollars less than his.

“What happens is they don’t move rank and file pay up but continue to raise starting pay,” Ike said, addressing the gap as “pay compression.”

He said the city worked to address that issue in the late ‘90s but compression issues continued. The city’s study aims to fix the problem.

While they don’t fix broader pay gaps, incentives like the Beach bonus and Chesapeake’s retention bonus send a message that city leadership supports police officers, said Schrad, the executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police.

“It’s really about what the money says,” Schrad said. “If you’re willing to offer that, you’re communicating (to the officer) that (they are) important.”

Gordon Rago, 757-446-2601, gordon.rago@pilotonline.com