CMPD has almost 200 openings. Here’s how the city is recruiting police officers.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department continues to struggle filling widespread vacancies amid voluntary resignations and retirements.

CMPD has almost 200 open positions, Charlotte Budget Director Ryan Bergman told the City Council during its annual retreat in Durham on Tuesday. The announcement came a week after the city renewed its efforts to curb violent crime with a more evidence-based approach.

The vacancy rate is the same total CMPD had reported in March — and the reasons for the staffing shortfalls, including failing to hire police officers at a greater pace than the police department’s attrition rate, are largely the same.

“I think it’s really critical to make sure we’re at 100 percent manpower,” City Council member Malcolm Graham said in an interview Tuesday. “I believe there are a lot of hurdles for that to occur, but that should be the goal.”

Mayor Pro Tem Julie Eiselt said Charlotte must also confront negative public opinion, noting that “it is a tough time in this country to be a police officer.”

CMPD hired 85 police officers from other law enforcement agencies in the past two years, according to the presentation. Yet in 2018, there were 57 voluntary police resignations, surpassing the previous two-year average of 36 voluntary resignations, Bergman said.

From 2016 to 2018, an average of 69 police officers retired from CMPD annually, according to Bergman’s presentation. By comparison, between 2013 and 2015, there was an average of 30 annual police retirements.

“I’d expect 2021 to be a year with a lot of retirements, so we’ll have to be active in attracting lateral officers,” Bergman said.

CMPD pay increases

Despite the high volume of CMPD openings, City Manager Marcus Jones told City Council members Tuesday morning that “there is good news.”

“There have been some changes in CMPD that starts to address this,” Jones said.

CMPD, for example, has enacted a series of pay increases as incentives for new recruits at the department.

The median CMPD police officer salary has reached $71,500, representing a $5,800 increase in the past 18 months. The sum includes pay incentives, but not overtime, according to Bergman’s presentation.

“We have to really market being a CMPD officer as an attractive career,” Graham said.

The department had planned to spend about $140,000 on marketing and recruiting efforts last year — primarily online approaches to connect with new talent, the Observer previously reported. It marked a sharp uptick from CMPD’s former recruiting budget of just $10,000.

But when considering the level of vacancies and future hiring decisions, Eiselt said it is also important to rethink the relationship between CMPD and crime.

“We rely on officers ... but really, we have to put more resources into the front end, and we have to do it with the county and the school system,” Eiselt said in an interview Tuesday. “When we look at our data of violent crime, it tells a story — and that’s what we really have to target.”

This story was originally published January 14, 2020 at 6:51 PM.