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At a time when law enforcement faces unprecedented recruitment challenges, agencies often struggle to attract and retain candidates who embody the right mix of skills, values and emotional intelligence. While some departments rely on traditional methods, the Rochester Police Department (RPD) in New York has taken a bold and innovative approach.
In this episode of the Policing Matters podcast, host Jim Dudley speaks with Sergeant Justin Collins, a veteran officer and director of RPD’s Police Recruitment and Workforce Development, about the dynamic program he has created that not only recruits candidates but prepares them to succeed while fostering community connections. This program allows potential police officer candidates to participate in training and community engagement opportunities in preparation for the police exam. Initially designed to keep candidates engaged and create realistic expectations of the duties of a police officer, the program has evolved to include strategies designed to increase representation of women and racial and ethnic minorities from Rochester on the force.
About our sponsor
eSOPH is a secure, cloud-based, pre-employment background investigation software system designed specifically for public safety agencies. Used by hundreds of agencies nationwide, eSOPH has been credited with cutting the time it takes to process a pre-employment background investigation by up to 50%, saving agencies significant time, money, and resources without sacrificing investigation quality. For more information, go to eSOPH.com.
Key takeaways from this episode
- Holistic candidate development: The program prepares candidates for every step of the hiring process, including written exams, physical agility tests and interviews. Beyond technical preparation, it emphasizes emotional intelligence, community engagement and conflict resolution skills.
- Community-centric approach: Candidates are immersed in local communities through volunteer work and mentorship opportunities, helping them understand the needs of the populations they will serve and fostering trust before they even don a badge.
- Pipeline sustainability: The program introduces pathways for candidates of all ages, from high school students in the Career Pathways to Public Safety initiative to adults entering the workforce. Those who don’t immediately enter law enforcement are directed to other public safety roles, ensuring long-term retention in the public safety ecosystem.
- Innovation in police recruitment: RPD leverages hybrid learning models, mentorship hierarchies and even social media platforms to track candidate progress. These tools ensure candidates remain engaged and supported throughout the process, creating a collaborative environment that promotes success.
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Episode transcript
Jim Dudley: When recruitment got really tough, so many law enforcement agencies seemed to circle the wagons and become parochial in their approach to coveting potential recruits for their department. But one agency took a different approach.
Our guest today is a police officer first but also a shrewd businessman. Sergeant Justin Collins is a 21-year veteran of the Rochester Police Department in New York. He has melded both careers to build an innovative and outstanding recruitment program there.
He’s a returning guest, and we appreciate him taking the time to join us again. Welcome back, Sergeant Justin Collins, Director of Public Recruitment and Workforce Development!
Justin Collins: Awesome, thank you very much! Appreciate it, thanks for having me.
Jim Dudley: So, I’ve been watching you and all the young people you’re bringing through your program. It’s not laser-focused just on police jobs. You were in your own recruiting business before shifting efforts exclusively to the department. Tell us a little bit about that.
Justin Collins: Sure. The last time we actually spoke, I was still on the private side of recruitment. It’s been about three years now since we implemented this program. How it started is I kind of saw some of this coming, going back to 2017. The numbers were dropping tremendously, which is very different from when you and I took this career.
As I mentioned, I’m a 21-year veteran. When I applied for the job, there were thousands of people applying. But we saw those numbers dissipating. So, I created something on the side, unrelated to RPD, to help prepare people for the hiring process.
As you know, unless you have a relative or a close friend in this process, it’s not easy. For us, it’s an 11-step process — and I’m sure it’s similar across the country. It’s a long, lengthy process with a lot of hurry up and wait. It’s easy to get discouraged or distracted and move on. I started noticing that we had quality applicants we needed to keep “sticky” to the process and the organization.
So, I started my business, Police Exam Career Prep. Once we had refined it, it really took off. We were able to place around 400 people in police agencies. We spent a lot of time getting to know the candidates. For me, it was never about quantity; it was about quality.
We can look back at the issues that have hurt policing — things like a lack of emotional intelligence. Whatever word you want to use, it’s about getting the right fit for police agencies. We didn’t just want to throw people into uniforms and see what happens. Even though we were down in numbers, we wanted to develop candidates for 21st-century policing.
The backbone of that, to me, is community work — being engaged in communities in crisis and ensuring candidates understand the depth of service required. Police Exam Career Prep focused on preparing candidates for written exams, physical agility exams, interviews and more. We got to know the candidates personally, spending significant time with them to build trust.
So that’s what Police Exam Career Prep was. We started working and having contracts, actually — which was unheard of at the time — with other agencies trying to place these folks and sending police leaders these applicants, which we knew very well. More than just knocking on doors and reading their ex-girlfriends’ statements about them or whatever.
We’d go to schoolteachers, second-grade teachers — all important stuff — but we got to know the candidate on a personal level for a length of time because that’s how you’re going to build trust with anyone, right? It’s time spent with them. Are they the same way in June as they are in December? Are they the same person? So, we were not only preparing them and getting to know them but preparing them for the written exam, the physical agility exam, the interviews, the multitude of interviews. Really getting to know that candidate. And as we grew, things went well, of course. One of the leaders, one of the command in my department — our department was down; our staffing was down — appealed to me and said, “We really could use your help. We’d love to implement something like that here.”
Obviously this was a business that you know I had built I was making money from the business but my heart is with this police department, it gave me my shot, so I decided to put down personal gain for a chance to help this department and build something innovative that could be a benchmark for this place to start moving forward and I knew that I’d have an opportunity to do it on a mass level because the department is so large.
It was a tough choice. A lot of people that I’m close to thought it was nuts to give up a business to help the place where I worked. But it just seemed to be the right move, and we’ve been going strong for about three years, and I’ve helped a bunch of people.
Jim Dudley: And it’s that altruistic approach that brings in this wide variety of young people — and not just for law enforcement jobs. I want to get to that in a minute. But we posted, if the listener or viewer goes to our show notes, they can take a look at one of your posters. It’s pretty much an all-comers invitation. You’re inviting people to come for police, fire, dispatch, EMS. And then I’ve seen your social media where you’ve got kids — I call them kids, but I mean they’re high school seniors, juniors, through college — and they’re looking into jobs throughout the city, through different types of the workforce. And just like you said, you start them in the communities where they can do their learning and help at the same time. Where do you find all these kids? Are you plucking them out of school?
Justin Collins: It’s funny that you mention it because it kind of acts as a wraparound. Even though we’re in the community expos in the community, we’re actually acting as a recruiter there because someone’s saying, “Well, my niece or my nephew or my cousin is interested in that.” And, of course, we have a very diverse program. So no matter where we are, you can probably relate a family or friend to one of the people that you’re seeing in our program. So it makes it that much more accessible and understandable what we’re doing.
Where we find the folks is a variety of places. We get them from the Civil Service list when we’re talking about our folks that are trying to become police officers anywhere from 19 to 34, with an extension if you have military service. But we are trying to build — and this is what you saw on that poster — we’re trying to work with the city school district in a partnership called Career Pathways to Public Safety. Our adult program is going well, but now we want to reach back and develop youth. So we have our Career Pathways to Public Safety, which is a 9th through 12th-grade program where we’re trying to get people interested in our profession. There’s some curriculum involved in it, too — teaching them pieces of law and different parts of what we do. There are a lot of demonstrations. And then we have our Police Explorers program.
There are a lot of Explorer posts across the country, and we’re relaunching this. This is something that we stopped during COVID, and we’re relaunching these programs. So the Career Pathways to Public Safety and the Police Explorer programs have existed, but we’re almost remixing them to make them a little more applicable to what we do. The issue that we’ve always had, though, is that after they’re out of the Explorer program or Career Pathways to Public Safety, where do they go? They cannot be hired by our police department until they’re 19 years and 8 months old and then sworn in by their 20th birthday. So we have that two-to-three-year gap — where do they go? Well, they’re not coming here — or they weren’t coming here. So we needed to figure out ways to make them sticky to the organization. Enter Workforce Development.
So we wanted to build something strong to start, which could be a launching pad. They could naturally progress and then, boom, into the department, all while investing in them, making sure that we’re getting it right. Now, as much as it’s great to talk about how we’re developing them and getting them ready, we’re also getting rid of people, Jim, who just aren’t cutting it and who do not want to invest in the community and are only taking this job because they want to drive fast or they want a gun — for the wrong reasons. Obviously, that’s all stuff that’s part of this profession, but we’re looking to invest and put our resources and time towards people who genuinely understand what we’re doing, who empathize with people in crisis, and who understand exactly what the job is.
To the level that they’re able to, based on what they’re learning, we’ve definitely thrown out as many great people as we’ve brought in through the program. We’ve probably thrown out a couple hundred more, just because they weren’t the right fit. I guess “throw out” isn’t the best phrase — we’ve separated service from them because they weren’t the right fit. We want to make sure that we are investing the right amount of time and the right resources into people who have a heart for service. That’s just it. But when we go back to the youth, for the longest time, the organization that I work for — the Rochester Police Department — we did not have to do this. People just came to us. This is really an opportunity to rebuild from the ground up.
And I talk again about quality over quantity. We look back at all the times there have been issues with law enforcement — going back to Rodney King, Ferguson, and many, many more, unfortunately — and we want to make sure that we’re doing whatever we can to develop future leaders and people who are emotionally intelligent and get it. While we can’t guarantee that time spent in the community will do that, I definitely like our chances because, as sure as we’re graduating all these great people, I get a lot of folks when I ask them to go read to school-aged children or to volunteer at after-school activities at the Boys and Girls Club or to work with the elderly. They’re like, “What? Why do we want to do this? Why are we doing this?” Because that’s what it’s all about. This is a vulnerable population in communities where you’re going to be assigned, and it’s kind of like a long interview. But again, we want to spend this amount of time and resources on a job like this — on a career like this — because of the power, the responsibility, and the authority that we’re going to be instilling in these folks and giving them as they do the work on the front end. It’s huge. We do a lot with implicit bias. We do a lot with financial literacy, trying to prepare that candidate for the career that they may be entering and that they think they want.
We talked about fire, that Career Pathways to Public Safety has a fire component, an EMS component. We are one of those components, but we’re starting to work with the City of Rochester Fire Department in developing a model like our program to help them make candidates sticky to their organization.
I want to explain a little bit about what we do. So, we meet bi-weekly in person. It’s a hybrid model, so we have our in-person meetings, and then we do a lot through a social media platform. The social media platform is really the glue to this — having my officers, my recruitment officers who work for me, being able to keep tabs on 100 people because that’s literally what we carry in the group. It’s really extremely challenging. It would be very challenging keeping track of 100 people and making sure they’re all doing what you need them to do.
So we use a social media platform and leverage that to help us keep tabs on the candidates. The program is 100% voluntary. It’s a hybrid program, as I mentioned. We do have expectations. Expectations are just slightly below the police academy because this is a pre-academy program. We do have a leadership hierarchy in the group. We have a class captain, a couple of class lieutenants and class sergeants. We definitely like to keep people accountable. We have a very strong culture in the group. It’s about “next man up, next woman up,” supporting each other, very inclusive. I think our diversity rate in the class is around 74%, so it’s really a reflection of the city that we’re serving.
But it’s definitely laser-focused. It’s competitive, but it’s laser-focused on getting to that opportunity and, when you get there, making it happen—going through, making the police academy, and so on. But there are no guarantees in our program. There are people that get all the way through and do not get picked up. But that’s where we talk about some of these satellite programs we’ve got—partnerships that we’ve built now with local private security firms, and there’s a consortium of them. We’ve got partnerships now with campus public safety. We’ve launched programs there. We’ve now got a partnership with a local hospital’s campus safety team.
If someone doesn’t make it through our police department, they now have opportunities that we’re providing them to go to campus safety or to one of these private security firms. And it doesn’t mean they can’t come back to us after some time, or maybe they start a fantastic career in one of those places. But for us, it’s all about pipelines. We don’t want a quick fix like, “Let’s just meet our numbers and be done with it.” We want to set something up that’s sustainable, a lot like the private sector. My mind is there when I think about my business and how I built it. It was to create pipelines that could feed each other. So that’s what we’ve set up here.
If you would have asked me 20 years ago when I started working here if I would be able to implement a business process in the Rochester Police Department, I would have said you were crazy. It’s never going to happen. But here we are in 2024, and that happened. Implementing these pipelines, another pipeline we’ve created is our early hire program. We have some jobs at police headquarters that are non-emergency call takers and we have our blue light PTZ camera operators, which provide evidence for officers on the road. These are part-time to full-time jobs. We would just kind of fill these jobs with great people, but not necessarily people who were interested in law enforcement. Now, we want to use these jobs as a way to groom and develop people who are looking for work before they get to that ultimate goal of becoming an officer.
So, our early hire program — since we started, I think we’ve had 17 people in it. Five people have graduated to become Rochester Police Officers. Another seven were poached by other agencies. We can’t control that. I tell my bosses that when they’re wondering what’s going on. I tell them that this isn’t the NFL, right? We don’t have guaranteed contracts with certain organizations. But we’re excited for them to get the opportunity, and we can always take them back as a lateral down the road once we get them into what we’re doing.
But the workforce group being the top of it, and then of course the police academy, we have our early hire program. 15:24 We do a lot with interns. We know that internships are very common in the private sector. Someone gets an internship, and if they impress, then they get offered an entry-level position, and so on. That is not how the Rochester Police Department has operated. I don’t know about other agencies, but I can tell you for sure that is not how we’ve operated. Now we’ve kind of changed that. Our Future Force intern program is another pipeline that we’ve created to Workforce Development. Since we’ve started that, I think we’ve had about 22 interns. We still have a bunch here because they’re going back and forth to college. We’ve now converted one person into a sworn officer — they went from intern to civilian employee to sworn officer. We have another three more that are going to be taking that step. So, you’re starting to see the machine work where it’s the right fit. Are you interested in being a police officer? Let’s start you here. 16:23 Let’s start here versus just taking an intern for someone who has no real interest and just thinks it’d be cool to be here.
Some might say, “Well, maybe they’ll get interested.” We don’t have the time. We want to focus on people who have an interest in this profession and, being selfish, a little bit about, okay, they want this. Now let’s put them in this spot, let’s put them in this spot, and let’s keep pushing them forward until, boom, they go to Workforce Development and then, boom, they’re in the police academy.
Jim Dudley: So, a lot to unpack there. But I think, number one, you’re bringing these kids in at a really beginning level, right? You’re introducing them to the work ethic that they have to put in as much as they’re receiving, right? Like any good mentorship program, they’ve got to meet you halfway. It’s not a fit for everyone, but I know from a lot of your posts that you celebrate. And I think those eight cops that get poached by other agencies — I think those are still a win, because they’re going into the profession. And I mean, we could all use the help, but I think when we throw up these walls and say, “Hey, the door only works one way — you’re coming into our organization,” or, “The other door is out the back way, and you’re leaving,” I think so many agencies make that mistake. They’re hiring people for these other jobs, but they may not have that sort of ground-up mentality of what the culture of an organization looks like. I think you’re introducing that.
I know you’ve celebrated the successes of young people that go into clerical jobs in city government or other jobs at parks and rec or other places in your city. What an awesome, holistic approach to filling up all the city agencies with really good people and teaching them those ethics, the work ethic, the stick-to-it ethic. Let me ask you, are any of these programs paid, or are they all voluntary?
Justin Collins: Well, the early hire program is paid because they become part-time employees. There are some full-time components too, so that’s paid. The whole Workforce Development where we get everyone from — that’s unpaid. Everyone — I mean myself and my team are paid — but everyone who’s in the program is completely voluntary. People want to be led, as you know from being a leader yourself. People want to be directed. If they want to be led, give them a way — show them the way. One of the benefits of what we’re doing with our program is that it is continuous. There is no season — it doesn’t stop. And the advantage to that is that people get to meet people who are leaving, who are doing it, and when they’re hired. For example, that 10 that we just hired — there’s about seven other people who know that group very well. That just got a lot more real to them because they’re gone now. They made it, and so now I’m going to make it. If you were doubting yourself, you say, “I’m going to make it.” That machine is what helps continue to fuel people. I can talk all day until I’m blue in the face, and my officers can talk to them, but when you’ve got your peers who are pushing and they’re making it, they’re going to pick you up. So, the group — the village — really helps raise this group too.
And the same thing works as we move from Career Pathways to Public Safety and our younger folks from Explorers. Where do they go? We want them to be mentored, right? That’s a word people throw around, but mentoring someone is difficult. It takes a lot of time, especially when you’re talking about mentoring a lot of people. So, how do you mentor large groups of people? We figured out a system that has been successful, that allows not only myself to be involved, not only my officers to be involved, but again, people in this group that have now been mentored by us. They can mentor other folks, and that moves the machine and moves the needle.
We’re excited about the long-term future of these programs. They’ve now been added to the Department of Criminal Justice Services, as I mentioned to you, in New York State. They have been made a part of the DCJS knowledge bank. So now they’ve basically published the program, and I was glad because it gives us a chance en masse to start to teach other people how we did this. We’ve had a few agencies now start this process, including the Rochester Fire Department, but also a few other law enforcement agencies.
The real key to it is having these other folks in this program, who you’ve mentored, start to mentor others. It really creates almost like a fraternity or sorority-type environment. I’m a big sports guy too, so I see it a lot like minor league sports — next man up, next woman up. Once you’ve started to do that, it just starts to move like a machine. You’re putting the right things into the group, and then the group leaders are pushing it to the rest of the group. So, on average, we’ll add probably 10 or 15 people a month. Five will stick. But now, we didn’t dump all our energy and resources into other people who maybe aren’t bad people but whose hearts just aren’t in this.
And I just don’t think you can invest enough resources and time into police officers. I just think we ask them to do a lot. Again — and this is cliche, but it’s the truth — tell me another profession, maybe military, where they’re leaving, going to work at night or during the day, and you kiss your loved one goodbye, and they may not see you again. That’s not a thing. So, investing in that type of responsibility — I just don’t think you can invest enough because you’re giving them so much authority, so much power. You’re asking them to be so many things to so many people. And I know we could go through the list of jobs we’re asking law enforcement to do, but spending time with them on the front end, I think, long term — and only time will tell — will pay dividends for an organization. We know the people in our group. We are developing leaders. We’re starting to see some of them become sergeants. We’re starting to see some of them join the SWAT team. We’re seeing this happen. We think our time on the front end is going to produce amazing things for our agency.
Yes, there are some other agencies that took some of our folks. We’re proud of them too. But the bulk of them have been with the Rochester Police Department, and we’re excited about where that’s going to bring us in the future.
Jim Dudley: I want to talk a little bit about the Career Pathways program. A lot of young people are asking, “What’s in it for me?” There are a lot of perks for them that maybe somebody not entering the program wouldn’t realize until they’re there. But first, I’d like to take a moment and thank our sponsor.
And we’re back, speaking with Sergeant Justin Collins, Public Safety Recruiter for the Rochester, New York Police Department and Public Safety for the City of Rochester. You’ve got a lot to cover, Justin, and we’re talking a little bit about what’s in it for the recruit or the mentee. For my students who are asking me about their resume, and many of them have nothing to put down — no part-time job or anything else — I tell them that volunteer experience means an awful lot. Especially with the things you’re doing there, it’s a resume builder. It helps with their communication skills, their social skills. They’re learning new things along the way, and maybe they’re latching on to a mentor.
Tell me about the other things you’re telling these recruits as you’re onboarding them. What else are they getting from your program?
Justin Collins: They’re getting financial literacy. The amount of money... a lot of times, we find these folks come from part-time jobs or jobs where they’re making very low wages. In our agency, we’ve never had higher pay, which the officers deserve every dollar of and then some, but their pay is going to skyrocket. So will some of the pressures as a police officer, all across the board. Teaching financial literacy — we know that stress comes from not being able to manage your money the right way, so we’re teaching people those pieces.
We’re also teaching people about wellness, being very open upfront with mental health. Granted, these people we’re developing and pushing towards the police academy are not yet officers, but we’re trying to prepare them for the mental stress they will feel, as best we can, as they prepare for this journey. They’re doing a lot with public speaking. We know this generation is doing a lot on phones. Our goal is to get people comfortable because we’re going to be asking these young men and women soon to enter living rooms with folks, working on domestics, conflict management, and de-escalation. We’re teaching them those soft skills that are so important — interview skills and conflict resolution.
These are all things that, even if they don’t ultimately get to the goal of being a Rochester Police Officer, will be highly relatable if they jump over to my friend at the Rochester Fire Department or to a private security firm or campus safety at colleges. It’s time and energy well spent. They know they have a heart for service; they know they have a heart for public safety. But let’s figure out where that is, and your time with us will be well spent. Our goal is to land you in a position — maybe it’s an admin position at headquarters or a clerical position of some sort. There will be an opportunity, more times than not.
The key is consistency. I ask for honesty, maturity, consistency, and emotional intelligence. Everybody in my group knows that’s exactly what I want. Creating that culture of helping the next man or woman up... I mean, there are jobs for everyone, but helping each other is the key. I don’t allow any judgment on someone. Physical fitness is a key component. Some people come in, and they’re just not ready, but our instructors will get them ready. The key is somebody there reaching a hand out to help them. That’s a big part of it.
Again, this is all pre-academy, but that investment on the front end, I believe, will pay tremendous dividends for our agency long term.
Jim Dudley: 100%. And you know, I recently got a call from a background investigator about a former student of mine. She was actually a TA for me in one of my classes after taking my CJ classes. It was from Stanford University Public Safety, if I can drop their name. They have different levels of public safety officer — unarmed, but not quite at that civilian level and not quite at the police officer level. It sounded like a two-year program where, if they were successful, they could move up into that sworn capacity. Is that similar to the way your program works?
Justin Collins: That’s one of the beautiful things about private colleges, like Stanford. They have the ability to move someone up. With us, we’re still governed by New York State Civil Service law, so there are no guarantees. They can’t just get a job here because we have a bunch of different steps and people higher than us who need to decide. But it’s strongly likely they will be hired here. If not, there are always other opportunities — maybe the Monroe County Jail, Monroe County Road Patrol, or one of the towns and villages nearby.
The efforts we’ve been doing now for quite a while are well known, thanks to my team’s hard work. Leaders in those areas know where to go to try to attract people from our pipeline. Even though we can’t guarantee someone a job after they finish the two years here, there is opportunity. They land one of these opportunities and start their career.
Jim Dudley: Nice. So, I know a big component of your program is building community trust, helping with these programs for young people and older adults as well. What’s been the feedback from the community? Are you getting agencies, daycare centers, or adult daycare centers knocking on your door asking for people to come?
Justin Collins: It’s constant. We are constantly getting calls, emails, and referrals from people wanting us to be part of their programs. Honestly, we pretty much take them all. Our group runs with anywhere from 80 to 100 people at a time. That’s the comfortable number for my team and me to manage. We have a civil service list that might have a couple hundred people on it. We triage that list and invite people as the group moves along.
But the community groups have always been a very important component of my career. When I started, I was bouncing from call to call, trying to make gun arrests and drug arrests. The crew I ran with in the department — that’s what I thought it was all about. You have a certain amount of success, and then I kind of had an epiphany. I realized the goal out there is to serve the community. Sure, I could continue making drug arrests and gun arrests — huge parts of the job, and we need them to happen — but I realized that making a long-term impact meant building connections with the community.
That’s when I started running the Police Activities League for the department, trying to influence and motivate others to get involved. I’ve been successful because, thankfully, I have a gift for getting others to want to help. I feel very blessed to be in that spot. The same thing applies today with our Workforce Development Program. We’re getting folks working with the elderly. We know often the elderly are victims of scams. Developing those relationships with victims of crimes and grassroots organizations in our city has been crucial.
For example, we work with mothers whose sons or daughters were murdered. These are people doing salt-of-the-earth work, and they need support. They hold marches, demonstrations, and events, and our folks are out there with the victims of crimes, learning from them. That’s as close as you’re going to get to it in these neighborhoods before you actually do the job.
We do a lot of volunteer work—after-school activities, Boys and Girls Club events, local rec centers in neighborhoods where these new officers will likely be assigned. By building relationships there, being present after school every Tuesday or Wednesday, these recruits get to know the community. I ask these folks for about six hours a month. Many of them end up doing hundreds of hours a year because helping feels good. It’s contagious. Their peers are doing it. They’re getting to know each other better, and as they see others in the program graduate into the police force, it motivates them to follow suit.
We’ve also launched our Faith Link Program with Workforce Development. We connect with local churches and other faith groups—Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, and others—establishing relationships and exposing our future officers to the diversity they’ll encounter. It’s been eye-opening, even for me at this stage in my career. The community constantly requests our presence, and we do our best to fulfill those requests. Having our workforce development recruits fill those gaps has been incredibly helpful for the department.
Jim Dudley: One of the hurdles we need to get over, especially with Gen Z and the next generation—I guess it’s Gen Alpha—is demystifying policing culture. You’re doing that, but you’re also expanding out into the community. Another thing we see in exit interviews is personal reasons that turn out to be pure pressure or pressure from their own families, saying, “What are you doing in the police department?” What you’re doing is showing them the benefits of the police in your city and how they can play a role in serving their community as well. All of those things add up to more people being a little less afraid of the unknown and joining a police agency.
Justin Collins: Sure, because in the academy, we’re going to teach them how to fight. We’re going to teach them how to drive fast. We’re going to teach them firearms. We’re going to teach them stuff that’s absolutely crucial. But we don’t want to continue to have history repeat itself where we’re not spending time on the front end to get emotionally intelligent officers and hedge our bets that we’re getting those people. The investment in an officer is significant—a couple hundred thousand dollars when you put it all together. So, let’s get that right from the start.
Let’s make sure that we’ve got the right people from Gen Alpha and Gen Z, and we’re doing things that appeal to them. When we launched Workforce Development, even when I was doing it privately with Police Exam Career Prep, people questioned, “Why would you want to do this? Why are you volunteering?” But I always tell them it’s been something that started my career back in 2003. I wanted to be a police officer very badly. And I said, “Well, I’m waiting, I’m waiting—what should I do?” I started volunteering at senior homes, playing bingo with senior citizens. I connected with a group called Crisis Services, where I’d be on call in the middle of the night, helping victims of sexual assault and domestic violence at hospitals as an advocate. It was way above my head at the time—I was a fish out of water—but it motivated me. It inspired me to say, “Hey, this is definitely what I want to do.”
I kind of paused my young twenties’ life and focused on, “This is what I want to do.” And I’ll tell you what—I heard from my background investigator when I was a rookie. I saw him on a call one day, and he said, “You know, I never forgot that you volunteered with victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. That stood out to us.” That was the genesis of getting these folks in the community. I did it myself, so I know it’s important. I know it meant a lot to the people I was helping, and it solidified my decision that this is what I wanted to do with my life.
There’s nothing like this career. But you need to know it’s probably the greatest transition you’re ever going to make. For me, this career was the greatest — next to fatherhood, this was the greatest transition of my life. You go from being a regular person to being a police officer. That’s much different — it’s a whole different lens to look through. But we don’t want people to forget who they’re out there helping. Officers go from call to call to call, and we know that we deal with probably the same hundred people who are up to no good, right? But there are thousands of people who live in these tough neighborhoods that are good people — people who go to work, try to raise their families and try to keep people safe. Some of them may be in poverty, but they’re good people. We want to make sure we expose our future officers to all those people because when you get in that loop, running and gunning, going to calls, and you’re young, you can’t forget about all those good people.
Jim Dudley: Hey, I want to be mindful of your time, Justin. I’ve got to say, I love your energy. You could be working your side business, but you’ve devoted your time to the Rochester Police Department, fire, EMS, 911 services and the rest of the city. I think that’s what it’s going to take to get us over this recruiting challenge.
I get it — after a long career, some people just want to walk away and not look back. But I commend people like you and others who are doing it — not for the benefit of making a ton of money but because they’ve had a good career, great opportunities, met great people, and want to give back. So, thank you for what you do. I want to give you the opportunity — what’s your newest program? What can we look forward to?
Justin Collins: Again, I think our newest initiatives are trying to build those relationships with private public safety at colleges, campus safety in hospitals and private security firms. Volunteer firefighting is also very popular in our area. These are service-minded individuals. We all kind of operate in silos — we don’t talk to each other. I’ve really wanted to open that door, get everyone talking, and figure out how we can all benefit. For us, we’ve got service-minded people who may want to work with us, or maybe they want to volunteer as firefighters. That’s great — they can do both. If they don’t make it through our field training, we can send them to public safety agencies, private security firms, or other places.
What’s in it for us is simple — dialogue. We know wages-wise, we’re predominantly at the top of the list among those industries, so people are naturally going to gravitate toward us. But we’re also the one that’s featured in movies and TV shows, so there’s always going to be that appeal. By consistently having dialogue and sending these other organizations good candidates, they benefit. What’s in it for them is they’re getting quality people. What’s in it for us is long-term relationships and a stronger community.
I’ll give you an example. Just the other day, one of my employees from our backgrounds department asked me a question. They said, “Hey, I’m talking to someone who’s a volunteer firefighter. They’ve heard you can’t be both a volunteer firefighter and a police officer. Is that true?” That’s never been the case — it’s ridiculous. But see, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. The universe lets us know that we’re doing the right thing because we’re able to clear up misconceptions like that and maintain these important relationships.
The key is ensuring there’s a home for them. Let’s create connections — introduce them to one of our officers, or introduce them to me. Once you establish that relationship, you start that process. They can join our Workforce Development program and figure out if this is truly what they want to do. I bet you’ve been asked countless times, “I want to be a police officer—what should I do?” And the answer usually is, “Buy a book to study or start doing push-ups.” What we’re doing instead is saying, “Come to Workforce Development. Let’s figure this out. Is it really what you want to do?” And we can determine that pretty quickly.
So, we’ve created a home, a community, for them. The other students in the program help raise them, because I don’t have 24 hours a day to devote to every single person. The community we’ve built raises them collectively, with the investment we’ve put into the program upfront.
Jim Dudley: Justin, thank you for sharing your story. Keep up the great work.
