Although officers in the Athens Police Department are paid less than officers in other areas of Ohio, the shortage has less to do with low wages and more to do with certification requirements and the city's location.
The shortage of officers is primarily because of new recruits' inability to pass both parts of the required recruitment test, APD Chief Richard Mayer said.
Last month, only three of the 15 candidates who took the required certification test passed the physical ability component. All police recruits in Ohio must pass both the written and physical portions to become sworn officers, Mayer said.
Not too many of them fail the written exam
but a number of them don't pass the physical exam he said.
The physical component of the recruits' required test has two parts, Mayer said. The first is a test of sit-ups, push-ups and a mile and a half run. Recruits must complete all these activities within gender-based time standards.
The second part, which is not timed, is an obstacle course that mimics experiences recruits could face on the job, such as climbing walls, dragging a body, climbing through windows and maneuvering around obstacles, he said.
Despite the small numbers of applicants that can pass the physical portion of the test, Mayer said the test should not be changed to bring in more officers.
If you lower the testing process down you end up with a lower caliber of officers
and you don't want to do that
he said.
The Athens Police Department has only 19 full-time officers. Mayer said some officers have left the department recently because of a vast array of reasons. For example, one officer is on injured leave, one is on active duty in the National Guard and a few officers have left APD for higher-paid positions in other cities. Also, a few officers will retire this year, leaving the department with more vacancies and not enough qualified applicants to fill them, Mayer said.
It's one of those things where more are leaving than are coming in
he said. We're having a negative gain.
The chief said APD has made departmental changes in hopes of recruiting more officers. The hiring process has been changed so background checks are done only on those recruits that have passed all portions of the test and have successfully completed an interview.
In the past, background checks have been run on nearly every applicant, which tied up officers who do the checks and also caused the hiring process to take longer, Mayer said.
In addition to changing its hiring process, the department has placed advertisements in Columbus-area newspapers and has sent officers to Ohio colleges that have police science programs to recruit new officers, Mayer said. But many potential recruits do not want leave urban areas to move to a rural area like Athens.
There's been a downturn of police and fire applicants since 9-11
he said. It's also just that a lot of people don't want to come down here to Southeast Ohio.
Athens' location hurts police recruitment because urban areas have a larger pool from which to draw potential qualified applications, he said.
Mayer said another reason rural areas have a harder time drawing qualified applicants is because officers tend to get paid more in urban areas. For example, two of his officers left recently for higher-paid positions in Lancaster and Dublin.
APD officers' starting hourly wage is $16.35 per hour, Athens City Auditor Kathy Hecht said, and wage increases to $20.76 in an officer's fourth year.
Officers in Lancaster make a starting hourly wage of $13.52. This amount increases to $21.14 after four years on the job, said Lancaster city payroll clerk Marsha Conrad.
In Columbus, officers make $18.19 per hour as recruits and their pay increases to $27.86 an after four years, said Mary Raphael, a city Columbus payroll specialist. Cincinnati pays its officers a starting hourly rate of $21.81. This rate increases based on how many months the officer has been in the department, with most patrol officers making $25.19 per hour, said Lisa Hughes, a clerk typist for the city of Cincinnati.
The drastic difference in hourly rates of rural and urban officers could be because urban officers are faced with different types of crime than rural officers are, and they often deal with more crime in general, Hecht said.
I think they [APD officers] would like an increase in pay
but I also think that when we come up with our salaries
we compare it to comparable cities
Hecht said. Working in Columbus is not the same as working in Athens. If they get paid more
there's a reason for it.
While APD officers make less per hour than their urban colleagues, Mayer said wages are not the primary reason officers leave his department. The real problem for APD is its inability to fill vacancies within the department, not that officers are not paid enough.
APD officers' wages are determined through contract negotiations with the city of Athens. In the past, wage determinations have not been a problem for the city or the police officers' union, which negotiates the contract on behalf of the officers, Hecht said.
In fact, Mayer said contract negotiations are underway between the city and the police officers' union because the officers' current contract will expire in December. He said it could take up to a year for the contract to be decided.
