Chicago Police Supt. Terry Hillard today discussed the increasing loss through retirement of officers, especially experienced homicide and gang-related crime detectives, and recruiting efforts in an attempt to shore up the department’s ranks.
Hillard was to meet later today with 70 officers over the age of 63 to gauge their reactions to the prospect of retiring from the force. The planned meeting comes after last month’s City Hall talks mulling the possibility of a mandatory retirement age of 63 for police and fire officials.
For years, the city required police and firefighters to retire when they reached 63, but the rule was eliminated after a successful legal challenge in 1983. But in 1997, changes in federal and state laws again allowed forced retirement for employees in public safety departments.
During an informal discussion with reporters, the 56-year-old Hillard said that while age might not hinder an officer on the job, he is looking into the merits of forced retirement.
“A certain percentage of police work is not having to do with physical skills, it’s having to do with thinking and taking reports,” he said. “But that one instance when you need physical skills to do this job — we want to make sure that those police officers are able to go home at night and the offender is able to go to jail.”
Hillard said the department’s average age of retirement is 57. To combat the potential loss of the 70 officers he planned to meet with today, as well as the retirements of other officers, Hillard said the department is increasing the frequency of entrance exams and its recruitment of younger people.
In past years, when testing took place every three to four years, it was not uncommon for 9,000 to 11,000 applicants to take the entrance exam, Hillard said. But at the Jan. 5 entrance exam, only 4,500 people took the test. To stem the drop in the number of applicants, police have increased the frequency of testing to twice yearly.
Hillard also noted that even with the loss of older officers, he doesn’t foresee a shortage in the force, which consists of over 10,000 officers.
“The economy is so good that people do not want to become police officers,” he said, noting that another reason for the dropoff was the requirement that applicants have at least two years of college experience. Even so, there are plans to increase the college requirement from two years to four years over.
“This business is so complex now,” Hillard said, “(that) in order for the Chicago Police Department to be the best of the best, education plays a critical part in that equation.”
Taking a page out of the private sector’s recruitment playbook, the department is sending veteran officers to college campuses both in- and out-of-state to recruit.
“Law-enforcement policing has become so complex we need to have the best and the brightest,” he said. “That’s what we want.”
Hillard also said the department is considering having experienced officers and detectives who have retired coming back to train young officers on the job.
“We have to look at some more alternatives and more options of trying to get these folks to come back,” he said, even “if it’s just for training sessions to come back and help us when it comes down to the young detectives, young gang investigators, young youth investigators.”
