Fort Worth police department scrambles to fill slots

By DEANNA BOYD
dboyd@star-telegram.com
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FORT WORTH -- The retirements are up and the pressure is on.

As more Fort Worth police officers retire, the Police Department's training academy has gone into overdrive to fill the vacancies.

"Every time someone retires, I've got to sign the [state licensing] paperwork," said Capt. Richard Hoeppner, commander at the training academy. "I've never seen this many come across my desk on a regular basis."

Factor in the yearly resignations and terminations, as well as the City Council's authorization for 153 new positions in the department over the last two fiscal years, and the academy is scrambling to keep pace.

"We're probably behind, but we're looking for any other strategies we can find to increase the number of applicants we have," Hoeppner said. "It takes seven months to train a police officer. You can't just produce them."

One factor behind the increase is that this is the fifth year of the Deferred Retirement Option Provision program.

Enrollment in the program, which the city started in 2003, allows officers who have qualified for retirement to draw their regular salaries and have their pensions placed in a DROP account in exchange for putting off retirement. Once the officer retires, the money in the DROP account is his.

Officers can be in the program up to five years.

"It's almost like a bottleneck at the very beginning, because people who might have left don't," said Ruth Ryerson, executive director of the pension board. "Then everything gets back to normal."

Then-Police Chief Ralph Mendoza chose to retire after the full five years in the program.

As of Jan. 1, only 10 officers who had joined the DROP program in 2003 remained on the city payroll. By the end of February, that number had dwindled to three.

"In all pension systems, you reach a point where, financially, it's not beneficial to stay," said Sgt. Billy Samuel, another five-year DROP participant who retired from the department after 33 years.

Samuel said he applauds the training academy for sending out annual letters to those reaching the retirement mark of 25 years, asking them to indicate their plans anonymously.

"They're polling the employees in the Police Department to try to get a number of how many might be retiring," Samuel said. "They've done a great job."

Keeping up

Last year, the training academy increased recruitment classes from two to four a year.

"It became clear we weren't going to catch up that way, so we have bought thinner tables for the classrooms so we could put more people in the classroom," Hoeppner said. "We're putting 48 people in a classroom that normally sat 36."

Because each recruit academy class runs seven months, overlap was inevitable. The academy sometimes runs three classes at a time. To make do, the academy has staggered the times classes begin.

Larger and more classes created the need for more instructors. Each academy class requires an estimated 50 instructors.

Hoeppner said he recently received 12 new instructors from the department: five to work at the firing range and seven at the main academy building. He said the academy has altered its training to accommodate the larger classes, taking a military boot-camp-type approach instead of the previous instructor-intensive type of training.

"We made a decision ... that we would not decrease the quality of our training just because we have to put more people through," Hoeppner said.

Applicants down

Compounding the problem for the department, the number of applicants to the academy has decreased.

"In years past when we did applications, we would get 1,400 to 1,500 people apply," Hoeppner said. "The last time we did one, we got 800, so the applicant pool is dwindling."

Hoeppner theorizes that many could be going into the military instead of police work.

"A lot of your civic-minded folks who would go into something like law enforcement, after 9-11, saw the military as another option," Hoeppner said.

To draw more applicants, the department is planning to expand its recruiting beyond Texas. Already, the department advertises in newspapers in large cities like San Antonio, Houston, Tyler and El Paso. In addition, it heavily recruits at military bases.

Hoeppner said the department has also reimplemented a cadet program. Under the program, college students, at least age 18, work 20 hours a week for the department, which pays some of their tuition and an hourly salary.

Since beginning the program last year, Hoeppner said about 10 cadets applied for and were selected for academy classes.

The new recruits

"We're seeing a new generation of folks," Hoeppner said. "When I was down here as a lieutenant for seven years, we'd see one or two people drop out of the class every class. Now, we're beginning to see more people that after just week one, week two or week three, are like, 'We're done' and just walk away."

Hoeppner said 40 of the 48 recruits who started in one of his current classes are left. Two quit because of injuries and one was called up to the military, but the rest apparently just decided law enforcement wasn't for them.

"Folks used to hook up with a company and work with a company their entire life. Now, I saw a deal on the Internet the other day that said people change jobs 10 times before they're 36 years old,” Hoeppner said. Hoeppner said he believes that many people drawn to a police career aren't prepared for the physical and mental demands of the academy. Roughly half the applicants cannot pass the physical entrance exam, he said.

"Some of them get here and they find it's not what they thought it was gong to be," Hoeppner said. "It's not like Cops. Our academy is a lot of work. The motto we use is, 'You become a Fort Worth police officer the old way: You earn it.'"

Other challenges

The training academy, at 1000 Calvert St. near downtown, presents its own limitations, officials said.

"With three classes running, you run into problems like with the showers," Hoeppner said. "We're hiring many more females than we used to, and there's only four showerheads in the women's restroom. On the other hand, there's probably seven or eight in the men's restroom, and I'm pushing 40 people through them.

"They have 30 minutes to get dressed. When you're doing that three times a day, it seems to take a toll on the hot water."

Making matters worse, the police and fire departments share the academy, he said.

"They're ramping up also, so it becomes a balancing act," Hoeppner said. "We need the gym. They need the gym. We need the activity room. They need the activity room."

A new training academy could be planned for the two departments. The Town Lake and bypass channel proposed for the Trinity River Vision would displace most of the buildings at the site, starting with the firing range.

"We're looking for possible land sites now," Hoeppner said. "Because an academy is such an expensive venture, we're looking to do this in phases -- what we need to be built first and what can be put off."

Reasons for leaving

Officers who left the Fort Worth Police Department, by year and reason:

Reason 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Jan '08
Retirements 9 11 18 23 24 8
Resignations 20 12 12 13 14 1
Terminations 5 2 8 5 6 0
Deaths 2 0 3 1 2 0

Source: Fort Worth Police Department