Persistent vacancies challenge police agencies

AUGUSTA – The Maine State Police not long ago would get 1,500 to 2,000 applicants when it advertised for 25 openings every 18 months.

Nowadays, the department is hiring twice a year for the same 25 positions, and gets only 40 or so applications each time. As a result, it has about 40 vacancies on its 350-member force.

State police are not alone. Across the state, law enforcement agencies are reporting that they are having trouble finding qualified applicants for positions that a few years ago were easy to fill.

It used to be that state troopers actively sought overtime, said Maine State Police Lt. Charles Howe. With so many vacancies on the force, troopers now are being forced to take it.

“They have so much overtime they don’t want it,” Howe said.

In Sanford, Police Chief Thomas Jones said the department got hundreds of applicants when it advertised two years ago for a new officer. When he recently advertised for one of the six openings he now has, Jones received only 37 applications.

The York Police Department is recruiting at 36 schools and attending job fairs to fill its open slots. It took 18 months recently to fill three vacancies.

Experts say such scenarios are playing out across the state and the country. They blame the lack of interest on a variety of factors, including low wages, high stress and a deglamorization of the profession.

Others say the aging of police departments is resulting in large numbers of openings at the same time. Some say Maine’s police agencies are facing increasing competition from New Hampshire and Massachusetts for law enforcement applicants.

York Police Chief Douglas Bracy said many southern Maine communities simply can’t compete. “Salary and benefits are huge,” he said.

In the meantime, communities are beginning to feel the crunch of the shortage. In Saco, Police Chief Charles Labonte said his department has been in a hiring mode for two years and still can’t fill two positions on its force.

“It is having an impact on our overtime budget,” he said. “When you have two slots open, that is 80 hours of scheduled work that you are not filling.”

Coincidentally, the shortages are coming at a time when enrollments in criminal justice programs are high.

At Southern Maine Technical College, enrollment in the program has increased from 125 students to about 200 in five years.

Stephen Gotlieb, chairman of the college’s law enforcement department, said many graduates are being enticed by other opportunities, such as airport security. He said about a third of the graduates from the program enter fields unrelated to their major.