Mayor John Whitmire wants to tap into a younger audience for police recruits, but doing so may require going to Austin and changing state law.
During a news conference introducing new Police Chief Noe Diaz, the mayor said he is in talks with lawmakers to try to see what he could do to get younger cadets for HPD as a means of addressing its officer shortage, but the trouble with that was that the current law on the books doesn't allow those younger than 21 to carry a weapon. He said he wanted to explore ways to introduce younger candidates with proper safeguards, training and background checks.
"Let's grab them while they're fired up, give them a mentor and get an HPD career started younger," the mayor said Friday, adding that the city could seek to gain officers from the local community colleges too.
In a text to the Chronicle, Whitmire clarified he wanted to lower the age to carry under "special circumstances," particularly as a recruiting and training tool for those who want to be HPD officers before they turn 21. He said the law, if changed, would strictly apply only to police officer cadets in order to be trained as HPD officers.
"I want to bring as many qualified people to HPD as possible, and we are going to have to review policy and laws to get that done," Whitmire said Monday. "Then I think it's going to be done responsibly."
Diaz stressed the need to bring people into the department who are already vested in the community.
"We need them," Diaz said Friday. "This is our home, and who better to fill the ranks than the young people that we have in our community?"
Though the legal age to carry a weapon is 21 in Texas, in 2023 DPS officials said they wouldn't enforce the law after a federal court in Fort Worth called it unconstitutional. The department also can't deny applications on the basis of the applicant being 18 to 20 years old.
State law has also maintained officers can be recruited as young as 18. In 2023, Texas lawmakers sought to gain older officers by eliminating the maximum age cap for police recruits.
HPD's own rules dictate officers can't be younger than 20 and 1/2 , because they have to be older than 21 upon graduation from the police academy. New HPD recruits also must have either gotten 48 semester hours in college, 18 months of active duty military service, three years of full-time peace officer employment or 36 months of full-time employment anywhere.
Whitmire later said HPD was losing out on talented high school graduates who wanted to be cops but instead chose to join the military because of the age requirement.
The mayor wouldn't expand on who he was talking to at the state level about changing the law but said he goes "straight to the top" and that he wasn't "going to start naming names."
Asked about HPD's current age restriction and whether that would change, Whitmire said he couldn't do it until the state law is changed.
Former HPD captain weighs in
Greg Fremin, a retired HPD captain, was one of three 19-year-olds in his 1984 HPD class and said at the time, he couldn't buy bullets.
Granted, Fremin already had two years in the Marine Corps under his belt and an understanding of weaponry when he was going through the academy.
If he were involved in the decision-making process, Fremin would not lower the legal age to below 19.
"I would say that as long as these young men and women that are applying are mature and they have great life experiences, let them do it," Fremin said, adding that HPD needed to be very careful with its vetting and screening processes if the law were to change.
But if a background check fails and a younger person who shouldn't have a weapon is armed, Fremin said "it could be a worst-case scenario."
Fremin, who used to be captain over HPD's police academy, stood by the department's vetting process and said they used to go through hundreds of applicants before getting to the 70 to fill a cadet class. Those vetting processes don't always prevent slipups, though, even after doing everything you could.
There's risk with hiring younger officers with maturity, but that maturity will also depend on the person, Fremin said.
"You've got young men and women that are still maturing their thought processes, their critical decision-making skills, their rationale, you know their ability to communicate effectively," Fremin said. "I mean, all these things you get better with in time from a maturity standpoint."
Whitmire's newest initiative isn't his only effort to add more officers to an already struggling police force. He approved a budget amendment put forth by Council Member Julian Ramirez that added a sixth cadet class to HPD in 2025.
Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castex Tatum, Council Member Joaquin Martinez and Council Member Sallie Alcorn, who chairs the city's Budget and Finance committee, have also all called for raising the revenue cap to collect more property taxes that could help fund more police officers.
Whitmire has not made clear where he stands on raising the revenue cap.
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