DERRY, NH – As the New Hampshire Police Standards and Training Council kicks off their 183rd academy class Monday, departments across the state continue to look for new ways to fill open positions in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Over the last few years, New Hampshire police departments have struggled to fill their ranks.
A number of factors have stacked against them, according to recruiting officers; the state police academy has limited seats for each of its classes, the state’s retirement system has been less competitive than Massachusetts’ system since it changed in 2011, and fewer candidates are applying, particularly since tensions between police and Black communities have heightened nationwide over the past five years.
But some local agencies are making changes to the way they seek out and hire officers.
Derry and Bedford just hired or celebrated the recent hiring of a handful of new officers. Both departments have made changes that give them an edge in the hiring process.
In Derry, where they ceremonially badged eight new officers last Thursday in a tent outside the Tupelo Music Hall, the department streamlined their hiring process in September 2019.
Capt. George Feole said the department used to run its intake tests a few months before each of the state police academy’s four annual classes.
“Across the state the demand to certify police officers appears to be exceeding the ability and capacity of the state to certify police officers,” Feole said.
But even as departments grow and demand increases, the seats in that class have remained limited at 67, Feole said.
“What we are experiencing is three months before the academy even starts, all those slots are pretty much spoken for,” he said.
And as candidates were put in limbo, waiting for their chance to attend the academy, they would field other offers from different departments, and Derry would lose the applicants they had.
To combat this, Feole decided to start taking applicants as they came, process and test them any time of the year and front-load some of the in-house field training that the department would traditionally provide after an officer has graduated the academy.
This has meant running several application tests with only one to four applicants at a time, versus just a handful of classes with a group of up to 40 applicants. While it may seem like more work, Feole said it’s actually saved on overtime costs since it requires fewer officers on-hand at a time, and it probably breaks even on manpower.
On Thursday, the department swore in one of the largest groups of new hires — eight officers — in the past five or six years, the last time the department was at full strength. In 2016, they hired five officers, one in 2018 and four in 2019.
They still have two vacancies, Feole said, since they had seven to retirement and two from transfers to other departments in Massachusetts.
A certain amount of turnover is to be expected, and it takes about eight months from hiring someone to getting them ready to be out on the road, Feole said.
National issues around policing, race relations and economic factors can have macro effects that reach even small New Hampshire communities and hamper recruitment efforts. Sometimes even local budgets can have an impact.
Feole said Derry’s hiring woes five or six years ago were compounded by uncertainty around the town’s budget and whether the department was facing significant cuts. Some officers transferred out of town during that time, he said.
In Bedford, the police department recently hired three new officers to get them to a full complement of 40 sworn officers. Over the past three years or so, Bedford has struggled with an average of five vacancies, and as much as eight at one time, according to Chief John Bryfonski.
“The Bedford Police Department, like all law enforcement agencies in NH, has been and continues to be challenged in finding a suitable amount of qualified applicants to protect and serve even before the difficulties this year has posed for a number of reasons,” Bryfonski said in an emailed statement. “However, despite the pandemic and the difficulties all police departments are facing in the wake of the much needed conversations on racial disparities in the criminal justice system, we are still able to recruit extraordinary women and men such as our recent new hires who are willing to sacrifice to protect and serve their community.”
Recently, Bedford instituted a hiring bonus program. Certified officers get $10,000, new recruits who still have to go through the academy and get certified get $5,000 and current employees who successfully recruit an applicant get $2,500.
In recent years, the Salem Police Department joined forces with the Police Testing Alliance through Great Bay Community College, which streamlined the testing process for new applicants, according to Capt. Jason Smith.
But the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the Alliance to stop testing.
“This has impacted our ability to seek out qualified new hires,” Smith said.
Currently, the department has 63 positions filled out of 68 approved by the town budget, after hiring seven new full-time officers over the course of the past year.
But Smith said COVID’s effects on the town budget has added a new layer of uncertainty to the hiring process.
“We are holding back on seeking full staffing until a clearer financial picture emerges,” Smith said.
Larger departments like Manchester and Nashua have had an advantage in competing for candidates.
Manchester recruiting officer Jason Keim said they offer competitive salaries, they are reputed to be an accredited and professional department, and they offer specialized divisions and assignments that can’t be found in smaller communities.
The same is true for Nashua, according to Nashua recruiting officer Kevin Pucillo, but even they had to make some changes to attract candidates.
To start with, Pucillo’s position, plus one other recruiter position, was created last fall. And Pucillo soon after decided to do away with the department’s longstanding cap of 40 applicants per exam.
The recruiters also began expanding their outreach efforts to career fairs, social media and have looked to partner with organizations like the local NAACP chapter.
They’ve since seen a range of 45 to 75 applicants come in for intake exams in the last handful of classes. But even then, 75 applicants get winnowed to 33 after the physical and written tests, down to eight after the oral board and now to five who have yet to take the polygraph and psych evaluations.
In recent years, Nashua has averaged about 11 vacancies, and has had as many as 21 in recent memory. After recent hiring efforts, they now have five vacancies.
In fiscal year 2018, they hired nine and had an average vacancy of six, in 2019, they hired six and had an average vacancy of eight. And this fiscal year, they’ve hired 16 so far, with an average vacancy of 10.
Pucillo believes some of the factors that have made it harder to hire in the last five years include racial tensions going back to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, and a change to the New Hampshire retirement system in 2011 that Pucillo said made it less competitive than the retirement offerings in Massachusetts.
Still, he said Nashua has been relatively good at competing for officers, compared to other small departments in the state.
Londonderry Police has also been competitive, according to Capt. Patrick Cheetham.
“Londonderry, like several others in the area, are destination departments for certified officers,” Cheetham said. “We’re one of the largest departments in the state, we’re viewed as a professional department and we pay our officers well.”
Most of the officers they hire are already certified and transfer from other departments. Londonderry hired 13 certified officers and five new entries between 2016 and 2019.
Including 2020, the department has received 58 applications from certified officers and 491 uncertified candidates since 2016.
But the days of huge applicant pools seem to be long behind us. Cheetham remembers when he was one of 180 applicants who tested for two positions back in 2002. Today, Londonderry has seven vacancies and see, for example, 60 people sign up to test but only 30 show up.
Feole said a shrinking number of applicants has been a trend since he joined the force in 1979.
“When I took the test with the Derry Police Department there were probably 250 people taking that test,” Feole said. “Those days are long gone.”
