“We can immediately put them out in zones, have them working 911. It’s wonderful.”
The Atlanta Police Department celebrates the graduation of 25 new recruits Monday night.
23 men and 2 women who will help the department get more officers on the streets. But while APD adds new officers, they also continue to lose them--often to higher paying jobs in other jurisdictions.
Chief Erika Shields plans to tackle that issue by creating a new salary plan to reward officers who stay. In the meantime, she says they need to do a better job of educating officers on what they do offer.
“We don’t communicate to our new hires all of the benefits and perks that are available to them within the department.”
Those benefits include pay increases for speaking Spanish, housing initiatives and tuition reimbursement. The chief says it's also important for the department to change how it interacts with this new generation of officers who may want need more encouragement along the way.
“I welcome and embrace the change, but as supervisors, especially some of the ones who are a little more experienced, we really have to just shift away from the paramilitary mode.”
