LAPD Slows Rate of Officer Attrition

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn released new figures on police recruiting Wednesday, championing signs that the LAPD has begun to stem the depletion of its ranks, in part because the Police Academy in recent months has fielded consistently larger classes of recruits.

But the Los Angeles Police Department still is losing more officers than it is hiring, a trend that the mayor acknowledged will take time to reverse. In the most recent fiscal year, which ended last month, 449 officers left the department and 356 were hired. Overall, the department had 8,910 police officers, but officials say the force still is short of its budgeted number of officers by 1,100.

The result is that the department continues to shrink, but at a slower rate than in recent years.

According to figures supplied by the mayor’s office, the LAPD and others, the recent progress is mainly the result of surging academy activity. The number of recruits joining the academy in recent months has averaged 50 per class. Last year, half of the classes were canceled because not enough people were accepted to fill them.

Speaking at a morning news conference at the LAPD’s Hollywood Division, Hahn pointed to what he said were a number of reasons for the increase in recruits, including a new, more flexible work schedule and a faster hiring process. In addition, the mayor said he believes the prospect of new police leadership is aiding the search for new recruits.

Hahn opposed a second term for former Chief Bernard C. Parks, and now the city is searching for a replacement.

“It took a lot of years to shrink the department ... and it’s going to take a few years” to grow the LAPD, Hahn said.

With recruits increasing and the number of departing officers down slightly, the LAPD has seen a 26% reduction in attrition over the last year. Some department observers attribute that decline to the typical ebb and flow of retirements.

Still, the number of officers who resigned after they completed their probation was down 44%, from 229 to 129 over the last year. Those officers typically leave for other law enforcement agencies, officials said.

The city has made an effort to seek out those officers, sending 600 letters to police who have left the LAPD for other agencies. Of those, Hahn said, 62 have applied to return.

The overall hiring numbers are encouraging for the department, which had difficulty attracting officers in the late 1990s, particularly when the job market was tightening. Although other law enforcement agencies around the country experienced recruitment problems, the LAPD’s difficulties were considered severe.

Some pointed to the length of time it took to be hired; others said morale was low and that the Rampart corruption scandal affected recruitment. Also, Parks’ reputation as a strict disciplinarian discouraged some potential recruits from joining, according to some city officials.

Hal Snow, assistant executive director of the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, said other California police departments continue to struggle to attract new officers.

“Agencies are, across the board with very few exceptions, having difficulty filling their vacancies,” Snow said, adding that early retirement packages aggravate the problem.

Mitzi Grasso, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said she believes the department is becoming more desirable as it improves the hiring process and morale increases.

“We’re not losing candidates to other agencies the way we were before,” Grasso said.

The city typically receives about 11,000 applications a year, but only about 3% are selected, according to personnel officials.

Most candidates fail to meet LAPD standards during the background checks, these officials said. The department began using polygraph tests within the last year, something other agencies have done for years.

The LAPD and the city personnel department spent two days reviewing the hiring process and looking for ways to expedite it. It typically could take about 300 days before an applicant was hired; now that has been cut to about 120 days, officials said.

“To be quite honest, it was really awful,” said Maggie Whelan, general manager of the personnel department. “We’re looking at the process every day.”

The vast majority of police recruits are from Los Angeles and surrounding communities.

Among the newer officers is Tom Deckelman, a probationary officer at the Hollywood station who said he was in a class of 19 in June 2001. He said the discussion of a flexible work schedule was a factor in his decision to apply to the LAPD.

Officers in some parts of the department now can choose between working three 12-hour days a week or four 10-hour days a week. The mayor, who was endorsed by the police union, made it a campaign promise to implement the new schedule.

Hahn included money in the city budget for 360 new officers this year, but he indicated that he will ask for more if recruitment efforts continue to produce results.

“We need to make L.A. the safest big city in America,” Hahn said.