Pittsburgh Officials: City Needs to Step Up Police Recruiting

Police recruit training classes planned in Pittsburgh next year could bring in about half as many officers as the city has lost from its force this year, officials said Thursday.

Only eight people applied to join the first class, which will train people who were officers elsewhere, said Councilman Anthony Coghill of Beechview. Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt said the number "is going to be smaller than we originally anticipated."

The second class, designed for new police, will train about 35 people. More than 200 people applied for it, Schmidt said.

"The new recruitment class, that sounds great, but we're losing twice as many (officers) as we're putting on," Coghill said. "At that pace, we're going to be in a lot of trouble. We have to do an aggressive recruitment campaign."

About 70 officers left the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police this year, either to retire or join other departments, Coghill said.

The city now employs around 830 officers, officials said during a Public Safety budget hearing Thursday. The bureau is budgeted to have 900, though it typically operates above that number, a Public Safety spokesperson has said.

The city has not recruited a new police class in about two years.

"The hiring freeze for two years is making it challenging," Schmidt said, explaining the city now needs a "good consistent flow of new folks coming on to maintain the numbers we need."

Mayor Ed Gainey's office said in September that the police training classes would get underway this fall, but Schmidt said Thursday that officials now plan to launch the classes in 2023.

Coghill questioned whether part of the city's recruitment problem could be its pay scale. He said many neighboring municipalities pay their police more than Pittsburgh.

Schmidt said the city may need to launch more police training classes to keep staffing levels where they need to be. He said he is hopeful that there could be a third police class next year.

"Unfortunately, we're in a situation where we can't just create officers out of nowhere," he said. "We have to make sure they're well-trained and appropriate for our city."

Even with the new police classes, Coghill said, the city could likely see police staffing levels continue to drop if officers continue leaving at the rate they did this year.

Council President Theresa Kail-Smith, of Westwood, said she is concerned that officers who are forced to work significant overtime because of staffing shortages could be more likely to make mistakes or get injured because they're overworked.

The city has spent up to $20,000 in a single day to cover overtime pay for officers who are filling in for short-manned shifts, Coghill said.

Councilman Bruce Kraus, of the South Side, said investing in police had once been a point of pride. The force had about 1,700 officers in the 1990s.

"We're asking (a much smaller number of) brave men and women to go out and do the job we used to ask 1,700 officers to do," he said.

Schmidt said he would like to see police classes recruit new members as often as they can, given the budget and personnel they have.

It costs the city between $300,000 and $400,000 to implement a new police class, Schmidt said.

Gainey recently nixed a requirement that new police recruits have at least 60 college credits to join the academy, a measure that aimed to eliminate what his administration saw as an unnecessary barrier for people looking to become Pittsburgh police officers.

"I am hopeful that, with the hiring classes in 2023, we can hopefully get up to our budgeted strength and provide better service to the residents," Acting Chief Thomas Stangrecki said.

He said the loss of officers this year has made it a "challenging year" for the bureau.

"We always need to have an academy class in training to replace those that are leaving," Stangrecki said. "It's going to take a couple academy classes for us to recover. We have to keep the momentum going thereafter."

Stangrecki noted that the mounted police unit started the year with six officers but is now down to three.

Kail-Smith said she'd like to see that unit's numbers bolstered, as officers can often use the horses as part of their community engagement efforts, particularly with the city's youth.

"Every unit is affected by vacancies," Stangrecki said, adding that the city has about 150 detectives but is losing them at the same rate as other officers.

An independent study the city recently commissioned on police staffing levels is expected to be completed by the end of the year, Schmidt said. It could show areas where civilians might be able to replace officers in some roles.

Councilwoman Deb Gross said the bureau is budgeted to have 53 civilians on its staff next year, down from 80 in 2015. She questioned whether more roles could be filled by civilian employees.

Kraus also said a new public safety training facility is needed. The city has planned for years to build a sprawling complex in the city's Lincoln-Lemington neighborhood, but officials have said they do not know when the work will start and they do not have the necessary funding to complete it.

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