The recent recruiting crisis in law enforcement has occurred from a wide variety of reasons. Not only has societal views towards law enforcement fueled a cottage industry of attorneys, activists and special interest groups that constantly attack the profession and those that are called to do it, social media has spawned a new group of “constitution auditors” that reveal through their actions that they have no desire to actually help the law enforcement profession improve.
Columbia University Professor and New York Times Author, John McWhorter recently discussed another phenomenon of suspects uttering phrases like “I can’t breathe” and “hands, up don’t shoot” in an attempt to further intimidate the actions of law enforcement.
The Fall of Recruiting
I recently watched the terrifying and unsettling documentary, “The Fall of Minneapolis”. While the film purported to be about the facts that were hidden from the public about the George Floyd incident, it’s a breathtaking and shocking account of the damage that cowardly leadership can do not only to one city but across the globe.
With the documentary in mind and my concern about the state of law enforcement recruiting, I spoke to a 25-year law enforcement veteran that recently went back to an agency he had once worked for.
Upon his return, the agency looked nothing like it had before and despite 25 years of service they forced him to go to field training with an officer that had just a few years on the department. That was the beginning of the end for the officer. He resigned after a few months, explaining that it was the arrogance inside the agency that forced him out.
Leadership Matters
Dr. Travis Yates spent 30 years in law enforcement and saw more leadership issues during his tenure then he could share with me in the short time we spoke but what he said about recruiting is an ideology that needs to be shared throughout the profession.
Yates has spent countless hours speaking to law enforcement professionals across the country and he has been very open about the recruiting and retention issue in the profession.
“We don’t have a recruiting crisis…We have a leadership crisis,” he recently posted.
Yates is on solid ground with that statement.
Studies routinely show that support at work is the number one contributor to job satisfaction and what many law enforcement leaders do not want to acknowledge is that while it is true that many agencies are in the middle of a recruiting and retention crisis, many are not.
If the sole cause of the recruiting crisis is the defund and defame police movement or the media or whatever else we are being told by police leaders, then why isn’t it in every agency?
Yates blames leaders for much of the crisis and frankly told me that “if we keep waiting on others to fix our problems, those problems will never get fixed.”
Recruitment Reimagined
While Yates dials down to the issue of leadership, he brought something else up that I had never thought of. Agencies have spent millions in recent years trying to recruit. From bonuses to fancy videos and high-level marketing plans but, for the most part, none of it has worked.
Calling the situation, a “fork in the road,” Yates says that if law enforcement leaders don’t understand what it takes to recruit, he fears they will simply give up and present their communities with a “new normal” of police staffing.
According to Yates, few agencies have figured out that marketing was never designed for recruiting “but it was designed to make a lot of money and they have done that by taking advantage of a law enforcement clientele that simply didn’t know any better”, according to Yates.
Yates called on the recruiting campaign to begin with solid leadership with a mission to serve citizens and reduce crime. Once that is established, Yates says it is time to understand what recruiting actually is and that is “most definitely” not a marketing plan.
According to Yates, he has never met a police officer that entered the agency because of a website, brochure, or video. While those may be helpful elements to have, they will never recruit anyone.
Yates told me about SAFEGUARD Recruiting and touted their efforts in finding hundreds of candidates for agencies that had previously placed hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing efforts with no avail.
The difference, according to Yates, is SAFEGUARD knows the profession like no one else in the industry and their primary focus is recruiting.
But as Yates said, it takes leaders to understand the issue and make the right decision to correct it.
That begins and ends with LEADERSHIP!
