By Don Stacom
Hartford Courant
HARTFORD, Conn. — As they walked through row after row of recruiting booths, prospective Connecticut police cadets collected brochures from nearly 80 police agencies talking up entry salaries, medical coverage, tuition incentives, retirement plans and scores of other enticements.
Some of the Gen Z and Millennial prospects wanted to learn about contract terms, but recruiters said later in the day that most of the questions they fielded were about quality of life: Anything from “How much does your town support the police?” to “What’s your community like?” to “What’s the weekly schedule and how flexible is it?”
Connecticut’s first statewide police recruitment fair drew hundreds of prospects, mostly college criminal justice majors and older teenagers finishing their last year of high school. Mixed in were some corrections officers and mental health workers considering career changes, and a few police officers from other states looking for jobs in Connecticut.
Organizer Jessica Blank, a former Wethersfield police officer, hopes the event helps Connecticut police departments fill the rosters that are chronically depleted. Like the rest of the country, the state saw the applicant base for law enforcement jobs drop in recent decades, then plunge after the pandemic and the wave of anti-police sentiment from the George Floyd murder.
“The state police are down 350 officers, Hartford is down over 100 officers, so the need is there,” said Blank, a field consultant with the state police academy.
At Blank’s invitation, nearly half of Connecticut’s town and city police departments along with the FBI, the state police, the U.S. Marshals Service and other agencies set up booths outside the state police academy to promote the case for joining their ranks.
To set themselves apart, big-city departments leaned heavily on the special assignments that a new officer could work toward: marine patrol, the bomb squad or the hostage negotiation team, perhaps, or maybe the detective bureau or traffic division.
Small-town agencies focused on how their new officers get to handle a wide range of duties even on regular patrol, and a few of the more affluent suburbs stressed the advantages of working in a community that heavily supports its police force.
“What we’ve been telling people today is that not only do we want to make sure you’re a good fit for our agency, but make sure our agency is a good fit for you,” said Sgt. Geoff Miner of the Suffield police.
Most police departments parked a marked patrol car next to their table, but Suffield tried something a bit different: It used the space for a large drone, a police quad and a bike. Prospects who stopped by heard about how patrol officers can get to learn how to use the drone for search and rescue jobs, the quad for reaching injured or lost hikers, and the bike for patrolling rail trails and community festivals.
“It might not be for everyone but if you’re looking for that community-oriented agency that has opportunities for you to focus on, this is a good agency for you. We have a great management. To fit with a more modern policing style, we allow tattoos, facial hair, we have load-bearing vests,” Miner said. “From an awareness of the officer’s social well-being, we have a very good program for that.”
The fair, with a balloon-decorated entryway and food trucks, was a sign of how police recruitment has changed in the past few decades. Veteran officers from their 40s to early 60s typically recall several hundred applicants jamming into school auditoriums to take rigorous exams, even knowing that only a dozen or so would be hired.
But the once-glamorous field has become a much tougher sell now, and police chiefs routinely struggle to fill vacancies.
“While hiring is now improving in departments across the nation, agencies are still losing officers faster than they can hire new ones, so the overall number of sworn officers has continued to decline,” said Rick Green, communications director for the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.
Gov. Ned Lamont toured the fair and afterward said he’d like to see it repeated.
“It works, look at the enthusiasm here. I like to find what works and do it again,” Lamont said. “This fair was the first of its kind and had 600 people. West Haven (schools) said they needed a bigger bus because there were that many young people interested.”
Several of the young potential recruits said that despite the dangers, difficult work schedules and periodic bad publicity associated with police work, they’re still committed to pursuing it as a career.
“If not you then who?,” said 22-year-old John Heacox of Torrington. “If no one else wants to do it, you have to be the one to step up and look past all the troubles. I have a family in law enforcement, this is something I always wanted to do.”
Heacox said he’s interested in joining a fair-sized department with special assignments so his entire career wouldn’t be in patrol.
“That’s something that would bring more happiness than a couple more bucks,” he said. “And a good work environment would be best, especially in a hard career like law enforcement.”
Erianna Bartucca of Plainville, a 22-year-old criminology major at Central Connecticut State University , also said quality of life is important in choosing where to apply.
“All the departments here were all very personable, but there were ones that went above and beyond to talk about their town as well as their department. I also liked the ones that elaborated on the different divisions. I’ve always wanted to help people. At the Guilford table, the officer was saying she wanted people to feel comfortable calling the police.”
Like many departments, Orange sent a younger officer as its chief recruiter.
“This is something I always wanted to do since I was in high school. I tried research for mental health as a career path, but I decided it wasn’t for me, I didn’t want to do the whole PhD track,” said Officer Chris Artabane, who has been an officer for just three years. “I use my experience working with the mental health population and it’s huge. I can bring a perspective to this job that’s kind of needed now.
“To me, it’s being proactive. I want to be proactive in improving the community and improving society. This position even though it comes with a lot nowadays is really an important job to help people with mental health (conditions), to help people day to day,” Artabane said. “What really drew me to this is trying to little by little make a difference.”
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