TPD Announces Career Benefits To Deal With Officer Shortages

The Tulsa Police Department, like many police departments across the country, is dealing with a shortage of police officers. In order to address the issue, TPD is working on both short-term and long-term solutions to filling needed positions.

TPD can employ around 900 officers, but the department said that it's usually 100 to 150 officers below where it needs to be, and catching up when it's so far behind is already difficult.

As TPD deals with a shortage of officers, it puts more stress on the officers already on staff because they have to cover extra shifts. That can lead to quicker burnout and taking officers away from specialized assignments like detectives because they have to respond to 911 calls instead.

"The city is impacted in layers, and that is why it’s important that you continue to replenish the ranks of first responders. Then you can have the specialty assignments like detective divisions to fill later on," Jesse Guardiola, a TPD officer in charge of career development said.

TPD is trying several different methods to get more new officers into the field as well as retain the officers it already has. In the short-term, TPD is offering $15,000 for signing on while also doing a 12 percent pay raise for officers who have been around for 20 years or more. However, TPD is also looking at long-term solutions as well.

"It’s about building those relationships with those universities because again, requiring a bachelor's degree, you need to develop what I like to call a village to solve the problem. So we went out to different universities in the region. We have seven universities right now, three that have signed up that are giving us college credit for the police academy because we want to mitigate cost for the applicants that are coming up," Guardiola said.

While TPD will recruit the Tulsa area and surrounding region, Guardiola said that they do also recruit officers from out of state to try and get as many officers into the Tulsa Police Department as possible.