Police Experience Varies By Department

SPRINGDALE CHIEF: HALF ON PATROL RELATIVELY INEXPERIENCED

By Dan Craft

Posted: November 10, 2009 at 4:53 a.m.

J.T. Wampler
Springdale Detective Mark Smith conducts a training class for rookies Monday at the Springdale police station.

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SPRINGDALE — Seven new recruits started the process of becoming Springdale police officers Monday, placing Chief Kathy O’Kelley in a Catch-22 situation.

While O’Kelley welcomes the new officers, they underscore an issue she’s already trying to reverse: About half of the department’s patrol officers have three years or less experience in police work.

“That’s a lot of young officers, and as we grow and add more positions, that’s going to be more younger folks out on the street,” she said. “They’re good police officers, but I’d like to see a more experienced department.”

The combination of adding new officer slots, expected turnover when officers decide police work isn’t what they want for a career, and officers leaving for other departments after a few years all contribute to the lack of experience, said Capt. Ron Hritz.

“Some of them develop specialized skills and take them to the private sector. Others get out of the business, and some jump elsewhere for better pay,” Hritz said. “A lot of times our night shifts is mostly guys who are relatively inexperienced, because the older hands mostly want the day shift slots.”

In Fayetteville, all 18 patrol officers with three years experience or less work the night shift, said Chief Greg Tabor. Still, with 120 officers, he’s dealing with proportionally fewer rookies than O’Kelley.

Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder doesn’t have a lot of trouble keeping experienced patrol officers, mostly because the weeding-out process happens before they hit the streets.

“We sort of grow our own patrol people,” Helder said. “A lot of our folks start in the jail, and that’s where they can find out whether law enforcement is really what they want to do. We can also get a good idea of who’s a keeper and who’s not before they get to a patrol role.”

Of Helder’s 53 patrol deputies, 11 have three years experience or less, and nearly all the others have at least five years, he said.

Tabor, O’Kelley and Helder all had to turn to paperwork to determine who had worked how long. Greenland police chief Gary Ricker, dealing with three full-time officers, pulled the information right out of his head.

“Our closest thing to a rookie has been here six or seven years, and the others are at 10 and 13,” Ricker said. “Some small towns have a lot of turnover, but we’ve been lucky.”

While Fayetteville or Springdale officers may work strictly a patrol shift, Greenland officers serve multiple roles, Ricker said.

“There’s no detective to hand a burglary report over to. My guys make those follow-up calls themselves,” he said.

While O’Kelley and Hritz hope for a more experienced force in Springdale, trying to increase the average tenure is going to be hard if they get the staff they need, Hritz said.

“We need another 30 officers just to reach the national average of officers to population, and I don’t think we’re going to add 30 guys who all have 10 years experience,” he said.

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