U.S. police departments may be struggling to hire enough officers, but they’re not struggling alone.
America as a whole is suffering from a pervasive shortage of able and willing workers, including in other vital professions like health care and education. The main reasons for it are twofold, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent labor force review and projections: slower population growth, driven by reductions in birth rates and immigration; and an aging workforce, with baby boomers now reaching retirement age.
Unfortunately, this recent paucity of personnel will probably get worse before it gets better. “The impacts of lower population growth and an aging labor force are projected to accelerate over the coming decade,” the BLS report warned. “BLS projects that the annual rate of labor force growth will decelerate to 0.4% over the projection period, down from 0.6% in the preceding decade.”
At the same time, police agencies are desperate to hire. That creates a hypercompetitive marketplace where departments often must compete directly for the same candidates.
In such conditions, they need every advantage they can get, whether it’s salaries, benefits, promotional opportunities – or even just a quick and responsive hiring experience. It’s an endeavor too important for shortcuts – police candidates must be thoroughly vetted, and aspects of the hiring process may be grounded in law – but a fast, smooth and simplified pathway can be a major competitive advantage.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
The law enforcement profession faces some additional challenges too, and they didn’t just start in 2020.
A larger decline in the numbers of American police actually occurred from 2008–13, when the number of full-time U.S. officers dropped by 11.5%. That correlated with a time of economic downturn and growing public support for decriminalization of certain nonviolent offenses.
The total number of American police bottomed out at around 627,000 in 2013 but rebounded to just over 697,000 by 2019. Then the twin catastrophes of 2020 struck: The high-profile deaths of George Floyd and several other people of color triggered months of sometimes-violent protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.
Amid a flare-up of public hostility and amplified scrutiny, many cops hung it up; between April 2020 and April 2021, police retirements were 45% higher, and resignations 18% higher, than in the previous year. COVID-19 also hit police hard, killing more than 700 in its first year and a half and sidelining thousands of others.
While the deadly period of COVID-19 is (hopefully) over, the alarming pace of departures has continued. Data from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) found sworn staffing among U.S. police departments 0.9% lower in January 2023 than a year earlier, and almost 5% lower than January 2020.
The upshot has been many departments left shorthanded – by hundreds of positions in some big cities.
“You’ve got a workforce that’s being compressed on the front end, you’ve got a drop in people who want to be cops. And on the other end, you have a significant increase in people who are resigning and retiring,” PERF President Chuck Wexler told CNN in 2022. “It’s a trying time to be a police officer in this country … police chiefs are wondering who are going to be the cops of the future.”
Departments have compensated for shortages in multiple ways, from curtailing nonemergency activities to disbanding specialty units, and taken additional measures to broaden their applicant pools, including improved salaries, hiring bonuses and relaxed prohibitions around things like tattoos or past marijuana use. But the traditional cumbersome police hiring process has been slower to change.
A PROCESS IN NEED OF MODERNIZATION
When you describe it in 2024, the process seems especially archaic.
A department conducts its initial testing and identifies top applicants to potentially receive offers. Historically they’d send those individuals thick personal history questionnaire packets by mail (now that may happen by email), with instructions to fill everything out and return it. Security is an obvious concern and possible weak point, as these documents will include social security numbers and other valuable personal information.
From the applicant’s perspective, there’s a lot to collect: not only past jobs but former addresses, education, roommates, etc., and many rather invasive questions to answer to help weed out bad fits. When that information returns to the PD, investigators must sift it page by page looking for disqualifiers or items that require follow-up. That can result in substantial additional back-and-forth.
“Even if that’s happening over email, it poses a number of shortfalls, including lack of efficiency,” said Tyler Miller, founder and CEO of Miller Mendel, Inc., a prominent software provider whose eSOPH solution facilitates and streamlines the in-depth background investigations required for law enforcement hiring.
Ultimately a candidate who clears all the hurdles reaches a point of hiring, but the overall process can take months. And during that time, it’s easy even for interested parties to drift away to other opportunities. Comprehensive background investigations take time, and applicants’ bills need paid today.
It’s a process that eSOPH – an acronym for “electronic statement of personal history” – can accelerate by up to 50%, helping departments complete their vetting and get offers on the table far quicker than traditional methods.
After applicants are invited by an agency to create their profile in eSOPH, they complete any initial paperwork, tasks and personal history questionnaires required by the agency. Their background investigator then reviews their submitted background information to address any issues and then moves onto other tasks such as reference checks and interviews. It’s not prescriptive; the software is highly configurable and adaptable to each organization’s needs and processes.
Some of the time savings in this experience result from the applicant taking on certain duties traditionally completed by background unit personnel.
“By completing the smart personal history questionnaire in eSOPH, the applicant inherently completes a lot of the laborious work the background investigator had to do previously,” explained Miller. “For instance, investigators will get a list of roommates and other reference points, and they can just click a button and send those people links to complete reference questionnaires in eSOPH.”
eSOPH also simplifies the search for any potential involvement by candidates with the criminal justice system. Previously investigators had to search manually for contact information for law enforcement agencies or court systems in the area around where a candidate lived or worked. eSOPH provides that for them from its national database to jump-start the process.
“If you don’t have something like eSOPH, you’re going to Google, entering an address, drawing a circle and trying to find every police jurisdiction and court system in that area,” Miller noted. “With eSOPH you can complete a radius search around the addresses provided by the applicant and quickly find all the law enforcement agencies and court systems within the chosen radius.”
The platform also highlights red flags at the outset, sparing evaluators the sinking feeling of discovering deeply buried disqualifiers after hours of plodding through pages.
Other attributes of eSOPH include customizability of questionnaires, task lists and other documents; support for different reference types; exam tracking; integrated credit reports and social media screenings; address and email validation; and a messaging system that connects investigators, applicants and references. It’s also mobile-friendly for use on personal devices.
A QUICKER PROCESS BENEFITS EVERYONE
Making it hard on your applicants makes it easy to go elsewhere. Modern electronic tools can help agencies provide a smoother, easier process for candidates that ultimately helps get well-qualified officers on the streets and fighting crime faster. And that benefits everyone: departments, officers, the public they serve and even candidates who aren’t a match but can move on more quickly to something that fits them better.
“Last year our staff were at a conference and encountered a commander at a police department that uses eSOPH,” Miller recalled. “He told us, ‘It’s great – I just approved three backgrounds last night in the hotel room.’ That’s not something you can do when a paper packet has to move from desk to desk.
“There’s also a considerable quality assurance benefit in terms of processing more consistent backgrounds and ensuring each necessary step of a background investigation is completed and documented. This can be more important when there’s more than one background investigator, and each has a different experience level and skill set. eSOPH allows supervisors and decision-makers a much more streamlined and organized way to review backgrounds and be assured all steps were completed and documented.”
For more information, visit Miller Mendel.
