Amid ongoing challenges with recruiting and retaining police officers in the wake of the defund police movement, the Richmond Police Department is seeking approval from the City Council to fund a $500,000 special recruitment incentive program that would hire up to 10 lateral police officers.
A lateral police officer is defined as an experienced officer hired to work for a new police department. They require less training — and they ultimately cost less to hire — than recruits entering law enforcement through a police academy.
The RPD’s special recruitment program, scheduled to be reviewed by City Council on Tuesday, would aim to recruit officers with at least three years of consecutive service and would provide bonus incentives for the new hires and also for current RPD employees who successfully recruit a lateral police officer.
It would provide monetary incentives of up to $45,000 to a lateral police officer, paid in three installments (when their employment begins, when their field training is completed, and when their probationary period is completed).
“This is a direct result of the defunding by the City Council in 2021.”
The incentive program would also seek to start vacation accrual rates for these new hires based on years of service at their existing agency, and it would pay $5,000 to any RPD employee who successfully recruits a lateral officer.
The RPD says the proposal would help mitigate the RPD’s ongoing staffing challenges.
“As you know, despite our best efforts we continue to be extremely short staffed,” RPD Chief Bisa French stated in a letter to Councilmember Soheila Bana. “This is a direct result of the defunding by the City Council in 2021. Since that time we have had difficulty recruiting and retaining officers in our department.”
In 2021, 26 officers left the department but only five officers were hired, and the following year another 27 left and 10 were hired, Chief French said. The RPD fared better over the last two years, hiring 33 new officers with just 16 departing the department.
The RPD’s number of budgeted sworn officers dwindled from 196 in 2014-2015, when the RPD gained a reputation as a national example for community policing, to 146 in 2020-2021. Experts consider 146 to be a low number for a department of its size. Currently the department employs just 121 officers, and some of them are inactive due to injury or administrative leave, according to police.
The staffing shortage has meant the RPD no longer has a standalone traffic unit to address traffic safety issues, nor does it have a foot and bike patrol unit to proactively patrol and engage the business districts, according to Chief French. The RPD also no longer has a narcotics unit, regulatory unit, violence suppression unit, parole or probation unit or school resource officer unit. Its investigations unit is less than half of what it used to be, from around 50 detectives to less than 15, French said.
“I am just as frustrated with our situation as the community is,” Chief French said. “I want to be able to provide the same level of service as we were able to pre 2021 but I cannot do it with the amount of staff I have.”
While violent crime is down in the city, “we aren’t able to address the quality of life issues that the community is regularly impacted by.”
Officers forced into mandatory overtime are “burnt out and exhausted,” French added.
“They are going from call to call during their shifts and there isn’t much time for proactive enforcement,” she said.
With the net addition of 10 lateral officers, the department would anticipate eliminating mandatory overtime, according to the RPD.
Officer Mario Esparza, formerly of the Pinole Police Department, was lauded as an example of a successful recent hire of a lateral police officer. He was recently credited with using his knowledge from Pinole to investigate and arrest an armed, wanted individual in Richmond.
