New CMPD chief wants to fill officer vacancies. Here’s how many there are.
Incoming Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Estella Patterson said one of her goals is to fill all vacancies at the department.
While she succeeded as the chief of the Raleigh Police Department in shrinking vacancies from 150 to 40, CMPD has seen relatively little change in vacancies among sworn officers in the last year.
At the end of September, there were 297 vacancies for sworn positions, said city spokesperson Jack VanderToll. Last year, near the beginning of October, the department reported it had 304.
VanderToll said the department has about 1,900 sworn positions in total.
He said there are 131 recruits in the pipeline at the police academy in Charlotte.
Struggle to recruit and retain
It isn’t a problem unique to Charlotte, as police departments nationally have struggled to fill officer vacancies.
The Austin Police Department, in Texas, had 330 vacancies in April, KUT News reported. Austin’s population is just short of 1 million people. The department is budgeted for about 1,800 officers, according to a city memorandum.
The Rochester Police Department in New York has 100 vacancies, according to Spectrum News 1. Rochester has a population just over 200,000.
The Hartford Courant reported over 50 police departments in Connecticut are struggling to fill entry-level police officer positions.
Some police officials have said the perception of police following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 is a factor in recruitment difficulties. The president of the Charlotte NAACP has said some Black and brown people may be concerned about joining a police department because of past treatment by officers.
Current CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings says that filling the current vacancies in a city where 157 people move each day won’t be enough. Jennings, at a lunch on Tuesday ahead of his retirement, said the department needs more officers.
“A city our size, we should have about 2,400 to 2,500 officers,” Jennings said. “If we don’t do that, we’re in trouble.”
