Reading City Council has approved a change to the city code to allow the city’s police chief to hire experienced police officers without using the state’s civil service process.
The measure was approved at a recent council meeting by a vote of 6-0. Councilman Wesley Butler did not attend the meeting.
The change is aimed at streamlining the hiring process and getting more officers out on the streets more quickly.
As of late August, Police Chief Eli Vazquez said, there were 27 openings in the city’s force.
The amendment allows the chief and Police Civil Service Board to hire Pennsylvania Act 120 certified officers without using the state’s Third-Class City Code’s civil service process.
The change applies only in the case of experienced new hires who have already achieved Act 120 Municipal Police Officers’ Education and Training Commission certification.
The certification is required for all municipal police officers in the state. It involves completing a certified training program and passing the Municipal Police Officers’ Education and Training Commission’s state certification exam.
Recruits without Act 120 certification and officers with less than a year’s experience are still required to follow the civil service process and meet any other state requirements, officials said.
Similar measures have been adopted in other cities, including Allentown, where it is working well, Vazquez said.
“Actually, they hired three of our cops in Allentown due to this,” Vazquez said. “So it does work.”
Vazquez said he does not expect the department to fill all the vacancies within a month.
“You know it’s not going to happen,” he said, “but it’s going to help.”
In other business, council approved by a 6-0 vote creating a second deputy police chief position at an annual base salary of $121,000.
An earlier move by Councilman Jaime Baez to amend the measure by limiting the position to two years failed on a vote of 3-3, with Baez, Councilman Rafael Nunez and Councilwoman Melissa Ventura in favor of the limitation and Councilmen O. Christopher Miller, Councilwoman Vaness Campus and council President Donna Reed opposed.
Baez cited budgetary concerns as the reason he favored making the new position temporary.
Vazquez said the goal is to prepare for future succession in the department, as Deputy Police Chief Javier Ruiz plans to retire in about two years.
“Part of my responsibility is to ensure that the department is successful in providing police services into the future with competent people in place,” he said. “My goals coming into this position were organizational excellence, crime prevention and reduction, and community engagement. I want to keep to those goals, and this is part of that process.”
Vazquez said he relies heavily on knowledgeable and experienced command staff in dealing with population growth in the city and managing the department.
The second deputy chief will need to learn how to deal with a wide range of issues such as personnel and the needs of the officers’ union. The person hired for the role must also learn the discipline and promotion processes, recruitment, retention and deployment strategies, community engagement efforts and more.
“This cannot be learned in a training session or through a PowerPoint presentation,” Vazquez said. “You have to actually do the job.”
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