Fort Collins remains a 'destination department' for police as other agencies struggle

Robert Holder was in a police academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in May 2020.

At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic sent swaths of the country into lockdown, and policing was thrust into the national spotlight after a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer murdered George Floyd.

Holder, now a recent Fort Collins Police Services academy graduate, had been drawn to law enforcement most of his life. Wanting to follow in his uncle’s footsteps, he joined the military first and then started his law enforcement career nearly four years ago. Holder said he sees being in law enforcement as being in a position to have “that ability to bring peace to a situation.”

While entering the law enforcement field in 2020 was challenging, Holder said he was grateful that “things were already progressing and on the way to changing when I was (in the academy), so I didn’t have to unlearn things.”

Since becoming a police officer, Holder said his goal has been to disprove the general negative perception of police officers and be "one of the good cops."

“You have the ability to do the right thing as an individual,” Holder said. “... I want to be one of the good cops, someone people want to look up to.”

Looking for an opportunity to grow his career and a better place to raise his children, Holder decided to apply to Fort Collins Police Services last year because he said the department “coincides with my values.”

Holder was one of seven officers who graduated from the Fort Collins police academy last month and one of hundreds who applied for the role. He's now in the department's 16-week field training program.

Fort Collins Police Services regularly gets hundreds of applicants for its in-house police academy, which has graduated five classes since it began in 2021.

Though “we’ve noticed a drop (in applications) since 2020-2021 with the pandemic, the national conversations with policing,” Sgt. Mike Boward said, the department still has no issues recruiting enough new officers to remain fully or nearly fully staffed.

But not all law enforcement agencies in Larimer County have been able to stay fully staffed.

Loveland Police Chief Tim Doran said he has been "facing the ghosts of the past" — largely public scrutiny over the arrest of Karen Garner and the prior administration's handling of the ex-officer's use of force in that arrest — while working to keep up with recruitment and retention over his first year as chief.

Larimer County Sheriff John Feyen said the sheriff's office is also struggling to maintain high staffing levels, a problem he said other sheriff's offices are facing in the state. He said it's an issue he will be heavily focused on in his second year in office.

Here's a look at where local law enforcement agencies stand with their staffing and how those that are falling behind are working to keep up:

Fort Collins police continue to see hundreds of applications for openings

Applications for Fort Collins police openings have dropped a little since 2020 — from right around 600 in 2018 and 2019 to 490 applications in 2022 — but the department has still received plenty of quality applicants to remain fully staffed or nearly fully staffed, Boward said.

The department hired 19 of the 490 applicants in 2022, Boward said.

"Policing is a tough job, so the place you choose to work is a big deal," Chief Jeff Swoboda said. "... Fort Collins Police Services has benefited from having a solid reputation for a long time."

As someone who came from an outside department in 2018, Swoboda said Fort Collins is known nationally as a department that is "forward-thinking" and trains officers well, making it a "destination department."

Fort Collins Police Services is the fourth-highest paid department in the state, and the highest paying outside of the Denver metro area, Swoboda said. The city is also typically ranked among the best places to live in the country, which are other reasons people are drawn to apply at the department. Holder said another reason he wanted to work in Fort Collins was the access to better schools for his children.

The department launched its own police academy in 2021, and its sixth academy class starts Monday, Jan. 8. Having an in-house academy allows the department to train its officers beyond the Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) requirements, Swoboda said.

With the 12 recruits starting with the department in the next academy class, Fort Collins Police Services will have 233 of its 234 sworn officer positions filled, Boward said. With the large amount of applications the department receives, Swoboda said the department could be fully staffed if it wanted to be — even hire an additional officer or two if he felt it had the right applicants — but he won't hire someone just to fill an opening.

"We'll run short — we're not so thirsty to get to full staff that we'll hire people we don't think should be Fort Collins police officers," Swoboda said. "... We're really not just chasing openings. We're hiring the right person who we believe will enter into our culture."

Boward said the department's philosophy is to "hire character, train skill," which means it looks for candidates who demonstrate integrity, empathy and a dedication to service knowing high-quality individuals can be trained to be police officers.

Fort Collins does an intensive screening process of applicants, which includes in-person visits by recruiting staff to an applicant's current department (if they're coming from another department), doing a ride-a-long and speaking with supervisors and co-workers to see what kind of officer they already are.

"Unfortunately, there are people who shouldn't be police officers," Boward said. "That's part of our job too, to make sure people that shouldn't be a police officer are screened out."

"Just because we change the patch on their arm doesn't mean they'll change as a person," Boward said.

Knowing officers around you are held to a high standard and were thoroughly vetted makes other officers feel more confident in doing their jobs because they don't have to worry about their colleagues doing the wrong thing, Swoboda said.

The thorough vetting process is expensive, "but the expense of hiring the wrong officer is much higher," Swoboda said.

Swoboda said he believes part of what attracts applicants to Fort Collins police is that they "treat their recruits like adults" and "talk about the issues" facing law enforcement, whether that's how public perception is impacting the profession or how law changes — like the addition of body-worn cameras — will impact their day-to-day work.

Holder said that's part of why he decided he wanted to work for Fort Collins Police Services after a few years at another department. He described the culture at Fort Collins as "no-nonsense," and that officers "do our jobs and do it right."

Swoboda said he encourages officers to think differently and problem-solve, and "we're going to give you that autonomy."

Boward said it's hard to know exactly why the number of applications the department has received have dropped in the last few years, but he acknowledged "some of the national conversations, narratives have affected some people," including some officers who have left the profession in recent years.

"Say we have 490 people apply, we could have 490 different reasons why people apply," Boward said. "... The same goes for people that leave."

Swoboda said officers are encouraged to utilize mental health resources — including giving officers and professional staff paid time away to see the in-house psychologist — because "thinking about mental health is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength."

For those rethinking if law enforcement is the right career for them, Fort Collins Police Services allows officers to take an unpaid leave for up to a year to try out other career paths, and if they change their mind within that year and there's an opening at their position, they are hired right back, Swoboda said. About half of the people who have taken advantage of that option in the past few years have come back, he said.

Fort Collins Police Services has a lot of long-term employees, including Boward, who has been with the department for nearly 25 years.

"Why I've stayed and why a lot of our officers have stayed is because we have really good support from our community," Boward said. "There can be challenges for sure ... But all the little things that you see, community members thanking you and showing that appreciation, even if not everybody shares that, that's what keeps me going."

Loveland police keeping up with staffing turnover under new leadership

Loveland's police department is staffed at 93%, Chief Tim Doran told the Coloradoan at the end of December, with four more officers waiting to start, which will bring the department to 97% staffed.

The more troubling number, Doran said, is the percentage of officers who can operate on their own, which sits at 85%. This doesn't include officers who are injured and on "light-duty" assignments, or the four officers who are still in training.

At its staffing low point earlier this year, the department was down 18 officers, Doran said, but it started 2024 down only four officers.

"Loveland has some wind under its wings in terms of recruiting right now," Doran said. "That's game-changing."

Doran credits the increased interest in working at the department to its improving reputation, competitive pay and retirement benefits. Doran said new recruits told him they wanted to come to Loveland for the benefits as well as the department's change in leadership, mission and direction.

After leaving Fort Collins Police Services last year to take over as Loveland's chief, Doran led the shift in the department's mission statement from "Save Lives, Fight Crimes, Survive,” to “Justice, Kindness, Humility."

The general theme he's hearing from new officers is "they know someone here who is so happy, they want to leave their current department and come to a department whose morale is higher," Doran said.

Doran said the department has also started offering signing bonuses — as much as $15,000 for an officer who is already POST certified — for people who are hired and complete the background check process and training.

"The bar is high in Loveland," Doran said, and about a third of applicants don't pass the background check. But with only four vacancies at the start of 2024, Doran said he believes he's getting plenty of high-quality applicants.

Fourteen officers left the department in 2023 — more than an average year, Doran said — likely in part because of new leadership and because of the scrutiny the department has faced in recent years, Doran said. He said higher turnover the first year under new leadership is to be expected.

"When you're in a department that's had some challenges, you're facing the ghosts of the past," Doran said.

Of the people who were fired, Doran said he "knew they didn't fit, and I didn't wait for them to decide on their own."

Despite the scrutiny and the departures of some officers, Doran said "the morale of this department is extraordinarily high given all the things faced by the city of Loveland in the past three years."

'Recruit, reward and retain' to be Larimer County Sheriff's 2024 motto

The Larimer County Sheriff's Office is facing a staffing challenge in a variety of areas, which is an issue Sheriff John Feyen said he plans to focus on addressing in 2024.

Feyen said the sheriff's office is only 85% staffed on the operations and patrol side and 80% staffed in the Larimer County Jail. On the jail side, that equates to 47 vacant positions, Feyen said.

When Feyen took officer last January, these staffing numbers were similar. Last January, the jail had 37 open positions and the operation and patrol side had 14 openings, compared to 15 or 16 at the end of 2023, Feyen said.

"I'm grateful that we're not sliding backwards, but we've got to make advancements on those vacancies that we have and take the time to find out why this is happening," Feyen said.

Larimer County isn't the only sheriff's office in the state to experience staffing issues, Feyen said.

"For whatever reason, it seems like, at least amongst the sheriffs I speak with, compared to their municipal partners in their counties, this is a challenge that is not unique to Larimer," Feyen said. "Recruiting and retaining seems to be a challenge uniquely to the sheriff's offices right now, and I don't know why that is."

The sheriff's office was granted additional funding to hire more jail deputies now that the jail expansion project was completed earlier this year, increasing the jail's capacity from about 450 to 600. The jail's average daily population still hovers around 450, which has helped with the lack of staff, Feyen said.

"There's about 100-150 overtime shifts per month in the jail that we're having to fill with the staff that we have," Feyen said. "That takes a toll on work-life balance. ... That is not helping our retention."

Recruitment and hiring have been ongoing all year, including six deputies who graduated from academy in December and started training in the jail, but "unfortunately, we're losing folks on the back end for a variety of reasons."

Feyen said people have left for other departments or left the profession entirely, and some have been fired.

"With our efforts currently, we are keeping up with the hemorrhaging," Feyen said. "... Whatever we are doing is not making a headway in what we have to do to serve the citizens in Larimer County."

County sheriff's departments face a unique challenge in recruiting because deputies are typically asked to do more and cover a larger area than municipal police departments, Feyen said.

Deputies might be in situations where they're forced to handle a call alone because they're in Red Feather Lakes and their backup is 30 minutes away, as opposed to a city police department where backup may be around the corner, Feyen said.

Sheriff's office deputies are responsible for more than just law enforcement duties, Feyen said. They may be asked to help with a search and rescue mission to find a missing hiker or respond to wildfires.

"Some people are like, 'I'm good with being a peace officer, that other stuff I have no interest in doing,' " Feyen said, which presents a big challenge with recruitment.

Feyen said he is entering 2024 with the motto "recruit, reward and retain" to try and address the staffing shortage, starting with thinking "outside the box" when it comes to recruitment strategies. One of those strategies might be to market the jail as a good training ground for people new to law enforcement before they make their way to patrol or operations in the Larimer County Sheriff's Office or another department, Feyen said.

"Let's be willing to look and be creative in how we market ourselves and what audiences we're marketing to," Feyen said.

While the range of what the sheriff's office is responsible for is a recruiting challenge, Feyen said it's also an opportunity for people who are curious about what a career in law enforcement or public service could look like.

"Your merit as a peace officer is not going to be measured by how many people you put in jail, it's going to be measured by the size of your heart and how many people you help," Feyen said. "(With the sheriff's office) you aren't always a peace officer. ... There's a lit of different ways to serve your community, as long as you do it with care and compassion."

How Windsor — one of Northern Colorado's smaller police departments — is faring

As Larimer County communities grow, their police departments are growing with them, and Windsor is one of them.

Windsor’s population has almost doubled since 2016, and so has its number of sworn police officers, Commander Richard Zeigler said. A new headquarters for the growing department is set to be completed later this year.

“Windsor’s a growing community, and that definitely increased our call load,” Zeigler said.

Neighboring Timnath is growing at a similar rate, with its police department getting its own headquarters just over a year ago to accommodate the department's anticipated growth.

The department is nearly fully staffed — 50 sworn officers on staff of the 52 positions in the department — which is typical, Zeigler said. It is actively hiring.

Growing departments typically offer more opportunities for people to participate in specialty areas, including new opportunities to work as school resource officers or on the K9 Unit, which the department started last year, Zeigler said.

The department also attracts officers from other agencies that have a higher call load and require more overtime work when some are looking for “a little better work-life balance,” Zeigler said.

“We still have quite a few calls … but you don’t get called in very much for additional overtime,” Zeigler said.

Better work-life balance means Windsor is getting “good, qualified candidates coming here and helping increase the skill level of our department,” Zeigler said.

The department has also done some more intentional recruitment with police academies and has sponsored two classes of new recruits through the academy at Aims Community College in the last three years, Zeigler said.

“We don’t hire someone to hire, we go for quality candidates and think about the long-term impact on the community and try to hire that quality employee rather than just a body to fill a seat,” Zeigler said.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: How Fort Collins, Larimer County law enforcement fare with recruiting