More About Police Recruitment Challenges – and How to Address Them

We recently blogged about the challenges of recruiting quality police officers to your department, challenges that are amplified if other departments in your region of the state are also recruiting. According to the Economist, the stronger economy is adding to police recruitment challenges, so it’s likely that other departments in your area ARE recruiting. 

In our recent blog post, we shared the values, personality traits and behaviors of potential police officers that you likely want for your department – and, because we’ve found so much material on the subject, we thought we’d share more of what we found. 

The Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, as one example, shares five qualities that “every competent, effective officer should possess”:

• Communication skills
• Empathy
• Integrity
• Professionalism 
• Courage

When discussing empathy, the article states that people, in general, don’t want pity. What they want is empathy. “It can be difficult,” the article shares, “to listen to the 100th citizen tell their story of being rear-ended, but a great police officer will remember that this may be the first accident for that 100th person. It's very easy to become jaded and cynical; the best police officers are able to empathize with people no matter the situation.”

PoliceLink.Monster.com provides a longer list, one with 16 traits:

• Trustworthiness
• Honesty
• Leadership
• Confidentiality
• Accepts responsibility for self and others
• Accepts criticism 
• Accepts extra responsibility without extra compensation
• Analyzes situations and does not jump to conclusions or take facts for granted 
• Readiness to lend assistance 
• Perspective
• Ability to compromise for greater good 
• Ability to challenge unlawful or unreasonable orders or authority 
• Obedience to lawful and reasonable orders 
• Intolerance of corruption 
• Rejection of unearned personal praise 
• Teamwork

Here’s more information about a couple of these traits listed in the article, starting with “Analyzes situations and does not jump to conclusions or take facts for granted.” It can be human nature to want to jump to conclusions when emotions are high, but police officers must gather together enough information to make the right choices, often in a very short amount of time. Emotional responses are often the wrong ones. 

Teamwork is also very important, as any experienced police officer can attest. When recruiting an officer, you’ll want to ask yourself these questions, according to the article:

• Does the applicant show a willingness to work with persons as a subordinate regardless of the relative experience and inexperience of the individual? 
• Does the applicant show any prejudice against individuals due to any personal traits, characteristics or makeup?

Finally, ​FloridaTechOnline.com provides the following list of personal and professional characteristics:

• Honesty, integrity and ethics
• Communication skills
• Kindness and empathy
• Open-mindedness and diversity
• Decision making and collaboration 
• Continuous learning and improving

As you can see, while some characteristics are making multiple lists, it’s helpful to look at several lists because crucial characteristics may show up on only one of them. This last list, for example, is the only one that includes open-mindedness and diversity. 

Fortunately, minority officers now comprise nearly 30 percent of sworn personnel, an improvement over previous years. And, although it’s important for departments to be racially diverse, and diverse in gender, it’s also important for them to include officers with a “diversity of life experiences.” This may include experiences gleaned from college or the military. 
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Police officers, the article points out, also must be “open-minded and serve a multitude of different types of people; serve them all equally and fairly.”

​Police Recruitment Video Services

You know that you’ll benefit by adding police officers with these traits and values to your department – but the challenge is finding and recruiting these individuals. One proven method is using law enforcement recruiting video services, which allows you to broaden the pool of candidates to choose from, while keeping a high level of standards for those you choose. 

So, contact Media Zeus today to brainstorm ideas for your law enforcement videos. We are the experienced professional choice and are ready and willing to help whether you know what concept you’d like to use or are still at the drawing board. Contact us today!