Law Enforcement Can Be Fully Staffed If...

There Is An Immediate Solution But Leaders Must Think Differently

In the last few years, I have written and spoken a lot on law enforcement recruiting. As a leader, in any organization, recruitment and retention is one of the most important issues you have. They go together because one feeds the other and if you aren’t doing what it takes to retain employees, you will never catch up on recruiting them.

The research is clear on retention. While we think it has everything to do with salary and benefits, it always has to do with leadership. That is a longer discussion and one I eluded to here, but for today, I want to discuss the so called “recruiting crisis.”

The Crisis Is There Is No Crisis

That sounds crazy to say because one google search will give hundreds of articles referring to the crisis in law enforcement recruiting but notice who is saying there is a crisis…our leaders.

Calling recruiting a crisis is dangerous because it gives every agency an excuse for why recruiting is down and when you have a low hanging excuse, motivation is limited to correct course.

The truth is, there isn’t a crisis because if there was, every agency would be suffering from it and that is clearly not the case.

SAFEGUARD Recruiting

I’ve been working with SAFEGUARD Recruiting shortly after the founder, retired law enforcement officer Doug Larsen walked upon to me at my leadership seminar. Lamenting what I had just said, Larsen told me that the crisis was how we were recruiting and not the number of interested police candidates.

Larsen had formed a recruiting company tailored towards the trucking industry, whose turnover rate was just shy of 100% a year and he was having massive success. Law enforcement was a few years into what they deemed a “crisis” but Larsen knew what I knew.

No one works in law enforcement because of marketing or cool videos. Leaders may like the fancy websites or the adrenaline pumping videos but they have very little to do with the high level skill of recruiting. Larsen had been in the trucking industry that offered few benefits and most didn’t have a web presence.

But actual recruiting works and we both knew that the profession desperately needed it.

The Past Is Not Now

I encounter a myriad of hurdles when I have this discussion with leaders but by far, the biggest one, is what we all rail against.

But this is how we’ve always done it?

Everyone reading has heard this in law enforcement and for the most part, it’s harmless. If we were talking about how to store video, write reports, or what type of fitness program to implement, I wouldn’t care.

But when it comes to recruiting, we are literally talking about the life and death of the profession and even those within the communities we serve.

What Am I Talking About?

Depending on the location, agencies are dealing with what I would call the 80/20 rule. Until recently, we may have been recruiting but we were recruiting to a group that already knew they were going into law enforcement so our efforts centered around making our organizations more attractive than others.

In most communities, that still exists but rather than having more qualified applicants than positions, it’s around 80%.

So how will you get the other 20%?

This is where actual recruiting comes in but it’s a different skill than we’ve ever had to have. How do you recruit someone that isn’t already going into the profession?

The private industry has been doing this for years and here’s a tip: The private business doesn’t do it and they definitely don’t put up a website and video and “hope” it works.

They hire professional recruiters or head hunters.

This is not unique to law enforcement. We do it all the time if we are hiring a police chief.

So why don’t we do this for our line personnel?

The short answer is we have never had to and an even shorter answer is that we have a “recruiting crisis.”

The Good News

Fortunately, SAFEGUARD Recruiting has figured out all of this and more and their success is unreal. There are plenty of so called recruiting (aka marketing) companies geared towards law enforcement but none of them are owned and operated by former law enforcement professionals and none of them guarantee names for your agency.

Even better, their pricing model is based on how many applicants you need and nothing else.

This may sound like a commercial but with an issue this important, you need to know how to fix it and they have fixed it. In fact, they have helped agencies from 5 officers to 5,000 officers and they have clients getting anywhere from 50-1500 qualified candidates a month, depending on the needs.

If you are trying to figure out the solution to what was never a crisis, call them up. The phone call won’t cost you a dime and their team will pour into you what they know because they know what we all know.

There is no other issue more important to law enforcement leadership than recruitment.

I filmed a short training course for SAFEGUARD that explains in further detail what effective recruiting is. You can take that course for free here.

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Dr. Travis Yates retired as a commander with a large municipal police department after 30 years of service. He is the author of “The Courageous Police Leader: A Survival Guide for Combating Cowards, Chaos & Lies.” His risk management and leadership seminars have been taught to thousands of professionals across the world. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy with a Doctorate Degree in Strategic Leadership and the CEO of the Courageous Police Leadership Alliance.