1,075 applicants yielded 38 employees a year later.

Recruitment funnels are a bear.

From Portland police, struggling to find qualified candidates, have more than 100 openings by Lindsay Nadrich.

“It’s hard everywhere to hire police officers these days, it’s a nationwide problem,” said Chris Davis, the Portland Police Bureau’s assistant chief of the services branch.

Davis said there are currently 120 sworn police officer positions that aren’t filled.

“We're authorized 1,001 sworn police officers, so 120 vacancies is about 12% of our sworn staffing, so that's a really big problem,” Davis said.

A really big problem when you consider what that means for officers already on the force.

[snip]

So, why not just hire more people? It's not that easy.

The pool of qualified applicants is shrinking. Out of the 1,075 people who applied to be Portland police officers last year, 817 met minimum requirements. From there, only 303 people were sent to background checks, and that's where the pool of eligible candidates got even smaller.

Roughly 85% of people didn't pass the background check, leaving only 43 that got hired. Out of that group, five didn't make it through the probationary period. So from the original 1,075 people who applied, only 38 people are still employed with the bureau.

And why aren't more people applying to become policemen?

At the beginning of April, Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association, released a statement saying, "The reason the Police Bureau is experiencing catastrophic staffing shortages, drastically declining recruiting success, and the inability to retain officers is due to one core issue: the intense anti-police sentiment in our city that City Council seems to share."

Portland has had its share of anti-police demonstrations.

Being about police and Portland, it seems like the Bubble is Reality.


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