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Halfway through his inaugural speech, Houston Mayor John Whitmire said the city made it far too hard for people to join the Houston Police Department.
As an example, Whitmire pointed out that new cadets have to buy their own service weapons, which can cost $1,000. He said he would convince private donors to pick up the tab.
Whitmire’s pledge echoed a key campaign platform plank: To reverse a years-long slide in the size of the city’s police force.
While paying for guns may eliminate one barrier, more obstacles stand in the way, ranging from low cadet pay to waning interest in policing as a profession. Big cities nationwide have for years struggled to attract and retain cops despite aggressive recruiting tactics, such as $30,000 hiring incentives.
Whitmire, a former chair of the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee, has yet to release a detailed plan for boosting the size of the Houston Police Department. Experts said he may find his promise to improve on his predecessor Sylvester Turner’s record easier said than done.
“It’s difficult everywhere,” said Jeff Asher, a nationally cited crime data analyst who once worked for the New Orleans Police Department. “It’s hard to hire police officers nationwide, no matter how committed to it you are.”
Thinning ranks
Houston Police Department statistics show a long-term decline in the number of sworn officers, coinciding with a rise in the ratio of residents to cops as the overall population grows.
In November, the department had 5,165 officers, 81 fewer than it did in 2016 when Turner took office. The proportion of officers to residents declined a tenth of a percentage point to 2.22 per 1,000 people during that time.
The most recent 12-month trend in Houston shows hints of improvement, mirroring a national survey from the Police Executive Research Forum which shows a recent rebound in hiring, albeit not one large enough to make up for attrition.
Houston also fared far better than many big cities during the pandemic, statistics from the FBI show. Houston’s 0.6 percent decline in officer staffing was smaller than other big cities, including New York, which dipped 4.8 percent, and Chicago, which dropped 10.6 percent.
Before he left office, Turner’s administration tried to reverse the decline in officer staffing. His most recent budget included a 3 percent pay increase for police officers and other municipal workers. His recruiting tactics also included a $10,000 incentive for cadets who start and finish the department’s six-month training program, doled out in installments.
Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, said the incentive helps, but it does not make up for higher salaries found in the private sector.
Cadet officers in Houston receive a base salary of $42,000. Once they complete their six-month probationary period, the base jumps to $58,600, with a salary range up to $74,425.
“That is very difficult for a lot of people to manage,” Griffith said. “If you’re coming from a private-sector job, a lot of times that’s a pay cut. That makes it very hard to recruit.”
Turner has defended his record on recruiting, noting that Houston hardly was the only city having trouble. Speaking to City Council in October, he said the city was on track to hire 2,500 new cadets by the end of his two terms.
“What more are you going to do than we are doing right now, other than flap your lips? What more are you going to do?” Turner said.
Whitmire’s promise
Whitmire has promised to mount a hands-on approach to police recruiting that will include listening to cops’ concerns and raising their pay.
At a Thursday press conference, he said he would be visiting academy classes next week to discuss what obstacles cadets had to overcome to join the department.
He also promised to boost officer pay. When asked how, he said the city was in the process of auditing every department to find waste.
Even with a roughly $400 million fund balance left over from Turner, Whitmire could face annual budget gaps of up to $268 million, at the same time that federal pandemic relief funds run out.
“Let me just tell you, we’re going to do whatever it takes,” Whitmire said Thursday. “After we cut out duplication and waste and conflicts of interest, if we don’t have enough to keep people safe, we will go back to the public to tell them we need additional resources.”
The city is under a voter-imposed revenue cap that limits how much tax money it can take in without asking the public to approve more. Whitmire said he might explore creating a public safety district, which would establish a separate taxing authority to generate dedicated revenue for police.
Whitmire argued that his outspoken support for police will boost morale, translating into more referrals from current officers.
“Officers, historically, have been our best recruiters. They haven’t practiced that in recent years because they were frustrated. They didn’t know that was the priority of our mayor,” he said.
Skeptical voices
Nearly four years after a Minneapolis police officer killed Houston native George Floyd, the calls to defund the police may have gotten quieter, but there are still plenty of skeptics of the idea that hiring more officers is the best way to reduce crime.
In Houston, advocates have called on the city to expand alternatives to policing, such as the crisis call diversion program.
Critics also note that crime already is trending down in Houston and many other big cities. Homicides were on pace to drop 20 percent in Houston last year compared to 2022, steeper than a national decline of 10 percent, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Dustin Rynders, legal director at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said he would rather see city officials take a hard look at how officers are spending their time, pointing to a recent study by his organization that examined the amount of non-safety traffic stops that Houston police performed in 2022.
“I support the goal of public safety, but we do that by being targeted in what kind of policing we do, and by funding services that get to the underlying causes of crime,” Rynders said. “I haven’t heard any specifics on what the plan is for the new officers, or where their money is going to come from, or where it’s going to be taken from.”
At his Thursday press conference, Whitmire said Houston’s welcome crime trends have yet to translate into residents feeling safer. Houstonians consistently rated public safety as their top concern during the mayoral election season.
“I am going to do whatever it takes to have adequate fire and police protection for the citizens of Houston. They just elected me because that was my message,” he said.
Competition near and far
Whitmire will have plenty of recruiting competition from other cities, however, many of which are pulling out all the stops in response to steeper personnel declines.
Seattle offers $30,000 bonuses for police officers transferring from other departments. Cadets in Washington, D.C., get $15,000 when they start the police academy and $10,000 when they graduate.
Financial incentives have had mixed results, according to Asher. He said New Orleans officials were more successful convincing existing officers to stay than persuading new recruits to sign up.
“Fewer people want to be cops. It’s a challenging environment,” he said. “It’s not something that is easily solved by throwing money at it. Which is generally the solution, to throw money at it.”
Cities must look at trickier problems of department culture, in addition to pay, Asher said.
Wade Carpenter, who is president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and leads the Park City Police Department in Utah, said departments have tried non-financial tactics ranging from allowing officers to sport beards and tattoos, to police explorer programs for youth, to making it easier for rookie cops to pick their preferred schedules.
“Chiefs and sheriffs have really had to change their perspectives when they’re hiring,” he said.
Locally, other departments say Houston is no exception when it comes to tepid recruiting.
In Katy, it once was normal for the police department to receive 60 applications for patrol officer openings. Now, the department receives about 10 on average.
“Everybody is short and everybody is hiring,” Katy Police Capt. Bryon Woytek said. “So, these applicants, as long as they have a good, clean background, they can pretty much pick anywhere they want to go work.”
One outfit that has succeeded in hiring is the San Antonio Police Department, which grew its ranks 2.3 percent from 2019 to 2022.
San Antonio Police Sgt. Jordan Ramirez, who leads the recruiting division, attributed that to aggressive attendance at in-person hiring events and a focus on hiring women and veterans from the city’s large military bases. The city’s culture also helps, he said.
“We’re one of the biggest cities in Texas, just like Houston, but it still has a small-town feeling,” Ramirez said.
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