Clark County law enforcement agencies struggle to fill jobs

After spending six years in the U.S. Coast Guard, Ridgefield native Ethan Ogdee began searching for a job in law enforcement closer to home.

Ogdee, 25, started testing for positions in April 2014, but it took more than a year of applications, tests and reviews before he landed a job at the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.

“It was difficult and it was time-consuming,” Ogdee said. He also said that it was expensive: “This isn’t a poor man’s game.”

As law enforcement agencies across the country look to bolster their forces following the recession, many are met with a shortage of new recruits. Though law enforcement agencies in Clark County aren’t seeing a large drop in interested candidates, some agencies are still having trouble getting to full staff.

Many agencies say public criticism of police work, rapidly retiring baby boomers and lengthy hiring processes are working against them. And even while local hiring is in full force, police are continuing to shift their vision for the kind of people they’re looking to give a badge and gun, creating a new culture for tomorrow’s officers.

Low interest nationally 

The shortage of interested police candidates is a strain felt across the country, with applications down 90 percent in some cities, according to news reports.

When you take a deeper look, it’s easy to see why.

With national unemployment rates hovering near 5 percent, public safety jobs must compete with the private sector — many of which pay more money for less dangerous and demanding work. In 2015, 123 U.S. law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty.

Increased criticism of police officers isn’t helping either.

In a well-publicized series of recent events, unarmed citizens have died at the hands of police, amplifying a feeling of distrust among minorities and inciting a nationwide conversation about requiring law officials to wear body cameras.

“The way that the climate of the country is and the attitudes toward law enforcement, you have people asking, ‘Do I really want to be questioned about every decision I make?’ ” said Breanne Nelson, human resources manager for the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.

As a result, the number of interested and qualified candidates applying to Clark County law enforcement agencies has dipped slightly. On the other hand, Nelson said that the people who are applying are doing so for the right reasons.

Deputy Ogdee, for example, said he paid attention to the news of police agencies in Missouri and Baltimore coming under fire for use of force. While it may have swayed others to choose a different career, it had the opposite effect on him.

“It encouraged me,” Ogdee said. “I feel like if people want to see a difference, they need to be the difference. I know I’m a good person, I know my moral compass is correct, and I knew I was going to be a police officer and make a difference in people’s lives.”

As in other occupations, Southwest Washington’s reputation as a great place to live and work also helps attract good employees.

Vancouver Police Lt. Scott Creager said he hears officers who previously worked at other departments say they came here to work because of the lower rate of violent crime, a shorter commute and the ability to buy a house.

Short of cops

Even as police work may be falling out of favor with some, law enforcement agencies throughout Washington are taking advantage of the improved economy and trying to restore positions lost in the recession.

“We haven’t seen hiring like this going on for decades,” said Jon Walters, founder of Public Safety Testing, which contracts with local law enforcement agencies to offer pre-employment testing. “Everybody’s hiring. There are hundreds of openings in Washington alone.”

While Clark County agencies are still seeing a good number of qualified candidates applying, they do have other factors working against them: a rapidly retiring police force and a long, slow vetting process.

Two years ago, the sheriff’s office got approval to add eight more deputies. And though the sheriff hired a record 17 new deputies last year, eight positions are still vacant.

Since January 2014, 21 deputies have left the agency — mostly due to retirements, Nelson said. On top of that, 20 more deputies are currently eligible to retire and another 20 deputies will be eligible to retire in the next four years.

The sheriff’s office isn’t the only agency looking to ramp up its numbers.

The Vancouver Police Department is in the process of hiring eight officers, including six positions added this year. Chief James McElvain has asked city councilors to let him hire 42 officers over the next five years.

To reach more qualified candidates, Vancouver police revamped their recruitment tactics.

One of a series of new hiring posters prominently displays what an entry officer’s schedule will be — two sets of five days on and four days off, followed by five days on and five days off. The schedule translates to having two weekends off a month — something Creager said appeals to the millennial generation.

“That’s who is entering the workforce now,” he said. Recruiters also updated the images of police officers on the posters to include more women and minorities.

“We just do the best we can to create an environment where everybody knows that this could be a career for them,” he said.

Smaller agencies in Clark County say they don’t do much in terms of advertising when they have an opening, mostly relying on word of mouth to draw interest. But the hiring process in general is more costly for smaller communities.

“It’s an expensive process … We’ve estimated the cost between $7,500 and $10,000 to go through the process (of hiring an officer),” said La Center Police Chief Marc Denney. “It’s a full-time job to recruit and retain and a lot of us don’t have time to do that.”

A test of patience

Part of the problem of trying to fill the ranks is how long it takes to hire an officer and get him or her on patrol.

After applying, recruits generally go through a process that includes a written and physical test, a polygraph exam and a lengthy background check, where investigators contact everyone from siblings to ex-girlfriends or boyfriends. If the investigations don’t show any red flags — such as excessive drug use, domestic violence or lying — the applicant then goes through an oral board interview, a psychological exam and a medical exam.

That whole process, local officials say, takes an average of eight months.

Once a deputy, officer or Washington State Patrol trooper is hired, the next step is the police academy, which can also be a waiting game.

“We really are facing a crisis in the upcoming year,” said Sue Rahr, executive director of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, which runs the academy. “We are only funded to train 300 officers a year. We now are anticipating 540 applications this year.”

Sheriff Chuck Atkins said that his agency is feeling the brunt of this, with the hiring of seven deputies pending an open slot at the academy.

“They can’t get to the academy and we can’t start training,” Atkins said. “That’s really what’s killing us.”

After new officers have completed the 4½ months of academy, they have four months of field training. So new officers aren’t ready to patrol on their own for at least nine months after their hire date.

Overall, the time it takes an agency to see return on investment — the sheriff’s office said it spends an average of about $20,000 on recruiting and investigating the background of a new deputy — can be a year and a half.

“My mantra is that as an industry, we take too long to hire cops,” Walters said. “We have to figure out a way to be quicker without compromising standards.”

Walters, who has more than 20 years of experience in law enforcement, said that at the same time he understands why it takes so long.

“It can’t be easy to get into this line of work,” he said. “We value our liberty and our freedom and we value life. (Officers) can legally take away both … That’s enormous responsibility and power.”

Ogdee, who has been a commissioned deputy for just shy of two months, said that the long, difficult process he went through was worth it. So far, he’s happy to be doing a job that he said he was meant to do.

“When people think about the police, they think fast cars and blue lights, but this job is about people,” he said. “You can put hope into people even if they’re making bad decisions … It’s a privilege to be in this kind of position.”

Warrior and guardian

When Battle Ground Police Chief Bob Richardson was first hired in the 1980s, you had to be big to get the job.

“Most police agencies had height requirements,” he said. “You had to fight people all the time.”

Over time, police realized it was more than just muscle that mattered — officers need to be good at communicating with the people they encounter.

Now, he said, “We’re looking for nice people and then train them to be police officers,” he said. “You can train how to be a police officer; you can’t train people to be nice.”

In the past few years, the curriculum of the police academy has changed to make sure incoming police officers understand their role in the community. The coursework adopted components of Blue Courage, a nationwide training that reinforces police officers’ roles as guardians.

“We put a much stronger emphasis on constitutional policing,” said Rahr, executive director of the academy. “I think we’re seeing a lot of backlash where some agencies have gone too far in only focusing on enforcement without including the balance of protecting people’s freedoms and civil rights.”

The academy has moved away from a boot camp atmosphere, replacing trophy cases in the hallways with large murals of the Constitution.

“We’re not creating battle-hardened soldiers,” Rahr said. “In a boot camp, you train soldiers to dehumanize the enemy … We do not want our police officers to dehumanize the people in the community.”

She added that police officers still need tactical skills. New hires are still taught defensive tactics and firearms training — in fact, the changes to police officer training include more hours spent developing these skills.

“It sounds counter-intuitive,” Rahr said. “We want our recruits to be very, very confident in these skills so they don’t feel the need to intimidate people … it’s the philosophy of what causes someone to be a bully — they’re not confident.”

And while the climate of the work has changed and the hiring process can stretch into more than a year, applicants continue to try to make a career of enforcing laws in their community. This morning, about 100 people are expected to fill the cafeteria at Hudson’s Bay High School and take both a written and physical test — the first steps to becoming a law enforcement officer.