Cops wanted: Recruiting tough amid shootings

• Delaware police departments are seeing a declining interest in law enforcement.
• Some agencies nationwide have lowered standards because of the smaller applicant pools.
• Many Delaware departments are placing a renewed focus and more resources on recruiting.

In many ways, Anthony Parker Jr. is the ideal recruit for one of Delaware’s 49 police departments. The 21-year-old who smiles with ease and is schooled in communications, understands struggling neighborhoods because he comes from one, and his childhood dream was to become a cop.

But that goal changed in recent years, he said, after watching a steady stream of news reports about people taking to American streets to protest the deaths of mostly young black men during encounters with police.

A north Wilmington native, Parker is part of a growing trend: Fewer young people in Delaware are considering policing as a profession in recent years than during past decades, multiple law enforcement experts told The News Journal. As a result, departments are placing a stronger emphasis on recruiting.

“There’s a decrease in applicants in general, and it’s not just a Delaware problem,” said New Castle County police Capt. Laura O’Sullivan. "Twenty years ago you were competing with 1,000 people for 15 spots, and today you certainly have to push harder to get more applicants to come in."

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Some departments nationwide have lowered standards because of the smaller applicant pools, like Philadelphia's, which is about to remove college education requirements. Steps like this have prompted concerns that the quality of officers on patrol will suffer over time.

"It's not really a leap of logic to say down the road you could have a problem," said Nelson Lim, executive director of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, who also studies police recruiting for the Rand Corporation, a Southern California think tank.

Several Delaware police departments told The News Journal while they could change application requirements, they have no plans to change the quality of officers they admit to police academies.

Interest in policing has waned as relationships have soured between cops and residents and as private sector jobs became more abundant with the end of the Great Recession, experts said. Delaware’s unemployment rate was 4.2 percent in April, compared with a high of 8.7 percent in October 2009.

Sometimes a career in technology, for example, is more appealing than policing, with its irregular schedules and demanding physical activity, O'Sullivan said.

"The stresses and pressures of those jobs, like working at Google, are probably different than doing shift work and working at holidays," she said.

But for many who live in low-income, African American communities, it is not a matter of better job opportunities, Parker said. Rather, police are seen as the “enemy,” he said. That sentiment has only been exacerbated by recent police incidents caught on video, such as the September shooting of Jeremy McDole by Wilmington police and the kick to the face suffered by Lateef Dickerson in 2013 by a Dover police officer, he said.

"I’m not too sure if I want to be a police officer anymore,” Parker said.

Fewer cops on patrol 

The growing mistrust is reminiscent of the 1960s when a mutual suspicion between police and residents metastasized in cities following political protests, said Michael Terranova, chairman of the criminal justice program at the Delaware Technical Community College campus in Stanton.

“If you want analysis of this, you have to go back to the (1960s) – the civil unrest that was taking place across the country,” said Terranova, who is a 23-year veteran of the New Castle County Police Department and chairs the Delaware Police Chiefs’ Foundation. “There was a major disconnect between communities and policing.”

To address image problems, many Delaware police departments are placing a renewed focus and more resources on recruiting – manifested through paid Facebook advertising, dedicated recruiting websites, more officers traveling to job fairs and dance performances posted to the internet.

O’Sullivan said New Castle County also wants to educate more people about what police officers do every day. That could convince more to consider the profession, she said.

"We do things like the Citizens’ Police Academy, where we bring in citizens to help understand what it’s like to be a law enforcement officer, so they can get the word out, whether it’s to their (church) congregations, to their families, to their businesses.”

New Castle County Police have also considered removing a college requirement for applicants who do not have four years military experience, O’Sullivan said, in order to encourage more recruits to apply.

Currently, New Castle County requires 60 college credits for recruits without military experience.

“They could change six months from now, but as of today that’s how (the standards) are broken down,” O’Sullivan said.

A smaller population of recruits likely means many of the highest-quality applicants, who might have pursued policing a generation ago, are instead going elsewhere, said the University of Pennsylvania's Lim. As a result, it could lead to lower quality officers on patrol over time, he said.

O'Sullivan argues that is not going to happen. New Castle County recruits have to go through a battery of checks, including a written exam, physical fitness test, polygraph background check, and medical and psychological examinations, as well as various interviews.

“The vetting process is serious, as it should be for this type of profession,” she said.

Policing requires officers to be measured, professional and not reactionary, O'Sullivan said, so those standards should not be changed. Rather, New Castle County, and other departments are casting a wider net for recruits.

"We have always strived to be professional. There are going to be people who may fight with us, and we’re still going to try to arrest them professionally,” she said.

The declining interest in policing comes at a time when the number of patrol officers in the First State still has not recovered from post-recession staff cuts. Delaware had 1,780 police patrol officers in May 2015, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared with 1,850 in May 2007.

Jeffrey Horvath, executive director of the Delaware Police Chiefs’ Association, said nearly every department statewide is facing some kind of recruiting challenge – whether it is attracting enough total applicants, or enough recruits who match the racial makeup of the area they will patrol.

“When I was hired in 1984, I think there were 200 people for two openings. Now you might get 40 or 50,” he said.

Nationwide recruiting data has not been published by the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics since 2008. But Terranova says it is “very accurate,” that there is less interest in policing now than during past decades.

The Delaware Technical Community College’s law enforcement training program is also impacted by an underwhelming level of interest in law enforcement, Terranova said. The associate degree program is struggling to fill all of its seats, he said. Enrollment in the college’s Law Enforcement Option has not filled its capacity for 50 students since its inaugural year in 2013. A total of 35 students enrolled during the fall of 2015.

There were 901 students enrolled in the entire criminal justice program in 2016 compared with 1,070 in 2013.

The program was designed to bring more Delawareans into the Delaware State Police, as well as to shorten the amount of time recruits have to spend at the state police academy, said Terranova.

What’s more, he said, today’s criminal justice students are more interested in law school, corrections or forensics than traditional policing.

“When I was here (as a student) in the (1970s), probably 90 percent of the (criminal justice) students wanted to get into traditional law enforcement," he said. "Right now, it’s reversed, probably 10 percent.”

Bucking the trend

Many are surprised when Imani Booker, 15, tells them that she wants to be a police officer when she grows up – including her father. But her dad is the reason she wants to be a cop, she said.

“He teaches me to be more open in the communities, and (not to) be scared,” she said.

Mahkieb Booker is a prominent critic of Wilmington police and founded Delaware’s Black Lives Matter, a group that targets racial issues and police brutality. He has led multiple rallies denouncing what he says is heavy-handed policing in Wilmington, carried out by people who are not familiar with its communities.

"Wanting to be a police officer is very rare in our community,” he said.

In May, he participated in a contentious march with other Wilmington residents to protest the McDole shooting and the state attorney general's decision to not prosecute the officers.

“Police officers, I don’t like them. You know it’s just certain people, like running backs, I don’t like them either. I’m a linebacker by nature,” said Mahkieb Booker. “But that don’t mean I have a grudge against them … and there are ones who do an excellent job.”

Imani Booker insists she is not rebelling against her father with her desire to join law enforcement, but rather is feeding off of his activism.

“I want to be a police officer to make the city better ... I’m tired of people not taking care of the city," she said.

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Still, Mahkieb Booker admits he was shocked when his 15-year-old told him what she wanted to be when she grows up. Surprised but supportive, he said, and clearly proud. Booker believes his daughter will be an effective officer because she will have empathy for struggling people.

In September, Imani Booker will take the first steps to launch her professional pursuit at the Delaware Academy of Public Safety and Security, or DAPSS, a charter school in New Castle that teaches classes in first aid, firefighting and policing.

There, she will likely get to know students from various backgrounds, including Josh Ritter, a 14-year-old from Bear, or Janelly Salazar, a 15-year-old from Newark, both who want to be in law enforcement.

Ritter considered firefighting until he noticed that many of the emergencies where firefighters respond could be intercepted by police.

“As a police officer on a highway patrol, I can stop those in case I see someone speeding, (or) a drunk driver,” he said.

Salazar would like to confront the drug epidemic that has crept across Delaware and the country, most notably in opiate form.

“We’re bringing in kids who believe in standing up for something that is right,” said David Wainwright, a public safety instructor at DAPSS.

Good policing is about “humanity,” and long-winded communication skills, Wainwright said with a chuckle.

“I could talk people into giving up everything because I would just bore them to death, but that was the way I learned,” Wainwright said, a retired officer from Evesham Township, New Jersey.  “It was always treat people decent. Remember that when you’re dealing with somebody you’re probably dealing with them on possibly the worst day of their life.”

He acknowledged that police nationally have developed a poor reputation, which is deterring some young people from the profession.

The irony, however, is that the ubiquity of digital cameras, which are what is prompting more scrutiny of police and consequently causing fewer recruits, will eventually boost public trust in policing and ultimately lead to more people wanting to be police officers, he said

“In the course of my career, did I see people who were heavy-handed? Yes,” he said. “But I think it’s a lot less now.”

Amazon over law enforcement

In late May, Mathew Washington stepped into the open space of a brightly-lit conference room at DelTech’s Wilmington campus eager to find a job.

At the job fair were officers from the Newark Police Department, New Castle County police, Delaware State Police and the Pennsylvania State Police – departments that frequently seek out African Americans recruits, like Washington.

But those police departments were not on Washington’s radar. Although he comes from a military family – a demographic that is typically inclined to join police – policing unequivocally does not interest him.

“No way,” he said. “You can get shot down and killed being a cop.”

On Friday, an officer in Folcroft, Pennsylvania, just over the Delaware line, was shot multiple times while he was conducting a drug investigation. The officer was in critical condition Friday.

Instead, he’s looking for a warehouse position at Amazon.com, or a similar company. Average hourly wages for warehouse workers at Amazon.com nationwide range from $10.78 to $14.51, considerably less than upper-$40,000 initial salary most police departments offer.

Newark Police Officer James Spadola, who was also at the job fair, places some of the blame for Washington’s sentiment on news reports about incidents, such as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, or the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

“With the media, and how we’re being portrayed, they (job seekers) think, 'I don’t want to be part of that,'” Spadola said, who is also running for the Delaware Senate as a Republican.

A few tables over from the Newark recruiting post was Pennsylvania State Police Cpl. Daniel Gonzalez. It has been a challenge to move applicants through the department’s stringent vetting process, which meticulously scrutinizes an applicant’s background, he said, and that could present a serious problem next year.

Between 1,000 and 1,200 officers out of 4,700 in total are expected to retire from Pennsylvania State Police in 2017, Gonzalez said, so the agency is hitting job fairs out of their state and competing directly with Delaware police agencies.

To move forward and maintain the size of the police force Gonzalez said police standards should be changed for people who earlier ran into trouble with the law but have since demonstrated their personal redemption.

“How do we look at society a little different and say maybe we need to look at ourselves too,” Gonzales said.

Looking forward

Between studying at the historically-black Lincoln University and working two jobs, Parker ruminates over what caused his career goal to shift away from law enforcement.

As a child, he liked to watch cops on TV arresting law breakers, and as a fifth-grader, he was delighted to receive a sticker from a Wilmington police officer that bore the logo of the department, he said.

As a gregarious teen, the north Wilmington native even shared his professional desire on social media, delighting his mother.

“I was 17, going on 18, when I had tweeted, ‘I want to be a police officer,’” he said. “My mom took the (Twitter) link, and she posted it on her Facebook, saying ‘oh my son wants to be a police officer!’”

But during the last three years, images of police on TV or on YouTube brought a different narrative to his attention. Protests erupted in cities such as Baltimore and Ferguson over incidents where officers had killed young black men, close to his own age.

Like those cities, Wilmington has a number of neighborhoods that suffer from high rates of poverty. Policing historically has been a profession that offered a path to the middle class for some low-income communities, but that isn’t the case in Wilmington as one rarely runs into a young person who wants to become a police officer there, Parker said.

It is a common story, said Horvath. Recruiting has fallen partially because policing is viewed by many young black men and women as “hostile place to work,” he said.

“You work towards (racial) diversity but it is a challenge,” Horvath said.

Farther south, in Georgetown, the city’s police chief believes his department has turned a corner with regards to recruiting people from multiple ethnic backgrounds.

During the department’s most recent hiring period, three officers were brought onto the force, an African American man and two Hispanic men. Directly prior to those hires, the department had 14 officers, 13 of which were white men, and one was a Hispanic man.

The town of Georgetown, known as a center of Guatemalan culture in Delaware, is 48 percent Hispanic,  15 percent black and 47 percent white, according to the 2010 U.S. census.

Georgetown Police Chief R.L. Hughes said his department was able to draw in a candidate pool that more closely reflected the population of the town because officers reached out to the NAACP and La Esperanza, a Latino cultural center in Sussex County, as well as advertised in newspapers and on Facebook.

While obtaining a large candidate pool of 100 applications that reflects the town is important, Hughes said, he stressed that officers did not use race as a factor when determining who was eventually hired.

“You don’t consider race during the hiring process,” he said, “you make the candidate pool deep.”

He acknowledged, however, that it is a continuing challenge to recruit people who may not initially consider policing, notably hiring more women.

“We still need to do better,” he said.

Acknowledging that some hold a negative view of policing could in itself be a way to attract new talent, said Norm Stamper, former chief of the Seattle Police Department, who currently writes about the law enforcement profession.  The new era of scrutiny could be a selling point for the right recruit, he said

Departments should take advantage of the current climate, by acknowledging the mistrust that exists, he said, and in some respects that might appeal to people.

“Look, if you want a challenge, becoming a police officer today where you’re still expected to uphold values of public safety and contribute to the overall health of neighborhoods in your community, there has probably been no more challenging a time,” he said.

In the end, that could veer Parker back to policing. He admits that a few years down the road, he interests might veer back to his childhood dream.

“Maybe in 10 years,” he said.  “If I did it, I’d want to do it in Wilmington.”

Contact Karl Baker at kbaker@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2329. Follow him on Twitter @kbaker6

Police and sheriff patrol officers in Delaware 

The number of police patrol officers in Delaware has crept up since the end of the Great Recession but still has not matched pre-recession levels, despite a larger statewide population to police. 

May 2015: 1,780

May 2014: 1,750

May 2013: 1,690

May 2012: No data available

May 2011: 1,610

May 2010: 1,530

May 2009: 1,650

May 2008: 1,790

May 2007: 1,850

May 2006: 1,750

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Delaware Technical Community College criminal justice enrollment

Students have shown tepid interest in DelTech’s law enforcement training program, which was launched in 2013 as a way to beef up recruitment for the Delaware State Police.

Criminal justice program:

2013: 1,070

2014: 1,012

2015: 984

2016: 901

Source: DelTech