Ypsilanti is facing a hiring crunch, reflecting a broader trend in nationwide and statewide policing. In December, the city council agreed on a pay raise for road patrol officers, expected to take effect this year.
The move is intended to help find new recruits because of a growing number of vacancies. Last year, the police department announced that the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office would assist in homicide and other high-level investigations due to a lack of detectives.
Robert Stevenson is the executive director at the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police. He said these staffing shortages are becoming common. “We are doing less with less,” he said. “There's less time for officers to get out into the neighborhoods. Sometimes they don't respond at all. They have to have people come into the station.”
Stevenson said wages are part of the reason for sluggish hiring. He said Great Recession-era cuts ate away at wages and benefits. “Cities started to eliminate their defined benefit. They also eliminated the post-retirement benefits that police officers had,” he said.
Stevenson said that wages were only part of the problem. Police departments, he said, are struggling to get minority applicants, largely due to backlash to incidents of police brutality. “You can kind of understand, why would I wanna join a profession that doesn't like us?”
To that end, Stevenson said departments are working to reach out to and build inroads with minority applicants. He cited increased recruiting efforts at minority job fairs and open dialogue with communities.
“Quite frankly, we need minorities in this profession. It makes policing much easier when a police agency reflects the demographics of their community,” he said. “If there's a problem within the profession, what better way to change it than to join the profession and change it from within? So we have specifically reached out to minority communities.”
He projected confidence in the future of the profession. “It's a great time to join the profession. It really is,” he said, citing the plethora of openings.
Ypsilanti’s police chief did not respond to request for comment.
