Myrtle Beach police roll out new tools to recruit officers

The Myrtle Beach Police Department has deployed new tools to attract new officers as the force combats a dwindling pool of recruits and a wave of disenchanted officers leaving the profession.

The 200 to 250 applications the department once received from interested recruits is now down to 60 and at least six officers that made it through training have left in the last six months, Chief Warren Gall said.

To get more recruits, the department revamped its website with the help of a city employee and streamlined its hiring process. The force created a new video, filmed and edited by Officer Mike Dame, to highlight the department and the city it calls home. The agency repurposed an old Ford Taurus on its fleet into a new recruitment car to roll out at job fairs and started a bonus incentive for officers that bring new boots on board.

The only cost for the recruitment efforts so far came with a $2,000 price tag for the wrap on the Taurus to help it stand out and serve as a conversation starter, Lt. Joey Crosby said.

Gall said the department isn’t the only one struggling to find and retain manpower. Police agencies across the country are finding it harder to recruit officers in an era where a cop’s blunders go viral and make national headlines.

“It’s difficult for us to recruit anywhere,” Gall told Myrtle Beach City Council at an October workshop — a statement Crosby, Gall’s lieutenant of strategic planning, echoed Nov. 19.

“We have seen a decline in our applicants,” Crosby said, adding that the department reached out to many other agencies and found “it’s a trend across the state … and country.”

But the frustration mounts locally as the ones the department does recruit start to leave.

“We’re having to learn how to deal with this new group of employees,” Gall said. “I can say probably in the last six months I’ve had six that left before their first year was up. And they went through the whole process. They went through the basic training, the preliminary training, the background investigation, the sight test, … all the grunt (work) and everything else they had to go through and some of them quit in the academy and some of them quit as soon as they got out of the academy.

“When you talk to them, it’s not the money; it’s not the city. It’s ‘I just don’t want to be a police officer,’” Gall said. “When the reality hits them smack in the face about what policing is all about and that this isn’t post-9/11 where police could do no wrong” they quit.

Police were hailed as heroes 14 years ago. Now, officers face almost daily scrutiny, Gall said.

“I think a lot of … (the new recruits) are seeing the difficulty that police officers are facing in the community,” he said. “When they try to go out and be community police officers, they’re getting rebuffed every time they go out and they get frustrated. And to this new generation, immediate gratification is everything.

“This isn’t a job for immediate gratification,” Gall said.

As officers continue to leave, the department looks to a shrinking pool of new recruits to fill the vacancies.

“It used to be we would go out with an advertisement and we’d get 200-250 applications to wade through before we were able to go into the process. Now we’re getting 60,” Gall told the city council.

By the time the candidates are filtered through a background check, the field is narrowed down to 45. “And then they can’t complete the written test or they can’t complete the physical ability test and that knocks it down even further,” Gall said.

The last time his department went through the process, he said, they interviewed 30 and only 10 made it through the final interview and background investigation.

“So we have to think about doing this (recruitment) in a different way because not just here, but everywhere else law enforcement is … not the profession people want for a lot of various reasons,” Gall said.

The department turned to the internet and revamped its website, highlighting the agency’s divisions, services and upcoming events and offering links on the homepage to the agency’s hiring and application processes.

The new site went live in October along with a new video, Crosby said.

The recruitment video stars an officer with the beach patrol playing a person who ran from police – all over the city – before finding himself ultimately locked in a room with officers who had only sought to return his wallet.

“We certainly did a couple of things with the video,” Gall told the council after the seven-minute clip’s debut at the October workshop. “One is we wanted to showcase the city because we’re trying to attract people who are looking at the city and looking to see the different things that we have to offer and the environment that they’re going to be working in. … We also wanted to show a lot of our equipment and we wanted to show our people and we wanted to show our message that we’re ‘first in service.’”

The force is using the video along with a new recruitment car at job fairs, military bases and recruitment events to attract more applicants.

Crosby said the department has heard positive feedback on the new car.

“The reason for the car is it gives us … a conversation piece,” Crosby said, “capturing the attention of those near it” who become “engaged about our department.”

Gall said that the department has also streamlined its hiring process.

“In the past, we had certified police officers who wanted to come work here. They had to run through the same process that everybody did. They had to wait until we were hiring,” Gall said. “Now because of the situation, if they’re from another agency and they want to work here, we’ll do a quick background to make sure that their certification is up and clear.”

The applicant will still have to take a written exam, pass a physical ability test, a chief’s interview and a background investigation, he said, but the department has worked on making the process faster.

The department also initiated a new recruitment bonus incentive for officers on the force.

“Through the city manager’s blessing, we were able to provide a $1,000 recruitment bonus to an officer that would recruit somebody else,” Gall said. “In order for them to receive that $1,000 bonus that person has to be recommended and vetted by that officer, make it all the way through the process and complete their introductory period after they’re hired, which is about a year after they’re sworn in.”

Crosby says the officers seem to be excited about the bonus, but the program is still too new for an officer to have received a bonus yet.

The agency is also finalizing a recruitment plan to measure the success of the new tools and the department’s efforts now in play.

“We’re excited about it,” Crosby said about the new recruitment efforts. “We hope it brings about some positive results and we’re eager to see what the results are.”

Weaver: 843-444-1722; @TSNEmily

This story was originally published December 2, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Myrtle Beach police roll out new tools to recruit officers."