The thinning blue line

For local police forces, keeping quality officers is getting difficult, as veterans retire and younger candidates seek better jobs

In law-enforcement circles, they call it the "thinning blue line." More officers from the baby boom generation are retiring, and younger people either are not pursuing police work in the same numbers as in the past or are leaving smaller communities to seek better opportunities on larger departments. Many local police chiefs say one of their biggest challenges is to fill vacancies from an ever-shrinking pool of quality candidates.

"It's clearly an issue for us," said Wellesley Police Chief Terrence Cunningham. "I've never seen it like this. We just can't keep up."

Since taking over as chief nine years ago, Cunningham has hired 31 officers to fill vacancies created by retirements and because of officers leaving to work in other departments, he said. In the last five years, though, Wellesley has lost 14 officers, many of whom took jobs with bigger agencies, such as in Boston, Cambridge, Framingham, or the State Police.

"I don't even have people who want to take the exam," said Cunningham.

"The millennials, the point-and-click generation, they need things now. They don't look at the big pic ture. Nobody's staying for 30 years anymore."

In February, Watertown's police chief, Edward Deveau, told the Town Council that his department had lost 19 officers since 2004; most of them had taken positions in Boston or Cambridge or with the State Police. Four of 10 officers hired in 2006 - the most recent class of recruits - are no longer with the department, Deveau said, adding that he plans to send another seven recruits next month to the police academy in Lowell.

One councilor expressed concern about what appears to be a revolving door, questioning department morale, while others worried about the high cost to taxpayers for recruit training and the overtime needed to cover the vacancies.

While most police officials interviewed said they haven't experienced the level of turnover seen in Watertown and Wellesley, nearly all agree that a shrinking pool of applicants and increased competition is making it harder to find and keep quality officers.

Statewide, the number of officers moving from one community to another is on the rise, said A. Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. According to a survey the association completed in January, the former Shrewsbury chief said, 113 of the 133 departments that responded took in or lost officers through lateral transfers. To beef up staffing, the Boston Police Department opened its ranks for the first time to lateral transfers in 2007, hiring an officer or two from between 40 and 50 smaller departments, Sampson said.

Police departments from Arizona, California, and Texas are recruiting officers aggressively from other parts of the country, including Massachusetts. Sampson said advertisements that invited officers to join the Phoenix Police Department were posted last summer on the walls in men's rooms at Fenway Park.

Framingham Police Chief Steven Carl said his department has more trouble finding younger officers than keeping them. "In Massachusetts, I haven't heard about the guys who stay for three years and go," but "it's coming," he said. "We have trouble finding quality recruits."

Of the 39 names on the civil service list of prospective applicants given to the department last year, Carl said, he deemed only eight as sufficiently qualified to put through background checks.

"It's a generational thing," said Carl, adding that young recruits often fail to make the grade because of an ever-growing electronic paper trail that reveals their past bad behavior. Carl said Google and social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace often turn up compromising photos or posted comments. Other revelations that end up disqualifying potential recruits can include bad driving records, arrest or eviction records, or even poor credit. "You're giving this person a gun," Carl said. "You're going to give it to a 24-year-old after you read he's been puking every night?"

Sampson said that police chiefs tell him they're eliminating more potential recruits because of background problems. The job now often attracts less-impressive applicants, he said, adding that since Sept. 11, 2001, some of the best police candidates now bypass their local force in favor of federal law-enforcement jobs with the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, or the Department of Homeland Security.

Although his town hasn't had the kind of turnover others are experiencing, Plainville Chief Edward M. Merrick said, he agreed that the attitudes of young officers or would-be officers only exacerbates staffing troubles. "Their loyalty is not to this agency; it's 'What's in it for me?' " he said. "These guys don't feel that loyalty to anything or anyone."

Merrick said he's shocked at how hard it is to persuade his full-time officers to take overtime shifts. "They don't want it. It interferes with their social life," he said.

"Employees who have come into law enforcement in last 10 to 15 years, there's been a change in their emotional need for a lifelong position," said Needham Police Chief Thomas Leary, a 30-year veteran. The younger officers today, he said, are often better educated than their older counterparts and are more willing to sacrifice job security for professional challenges in technical and specialized areas of law enforcement.

"It's like free agency," said Captain Mark Gromada, with the Newton Police Department, which he said has lost only a handful of officers in recent years. "Some guys want to be busy; they want to kick doors in," he said, referring to younger officers who long for the excitement and fatter paychecks of high-powered departments like Boston or the State Police.

To fill vacancies, many chiefs say, they try to entice officers in other local departments to join their squad. It's not quite poaching, they say, since a chief must agree to let an officer go, but it is highly competitive. "Everyone and their grandmother is vying for the very best candidate they can get," Merrick said.

Last year, said Shrewsbury Chief James J. Hester, his department hired three officers from other towns "for financial reasons." Hester noted that full-fledged officers can get to work right away, where recruits can take up to a year to complete training. "Plus," he said, "I know the quality of the officers we were getting."

Leary said it's important to thoroughly research officers who want to leave one department before hiring them for another. "You have to know what you're getting. Not everybody's crackerjack."

Newton's Gromada said of officers who leave to join another community's force, "they're the ones shopping around; they're never going to be happy. Sometimes you lose the community thing."

In Medway, the department has been able to fill its officer ranks from within. "We've been very fortunate," said Police Chief Allen Tingley. Most officers start out as dispatchers, and it may take them five years to work their way up to full-time officer, he said. The advantage with this approach, Tingley said, is that it gives employees a firsthand look at what the job is really like and "weeds out" those who aren't committed to police work. It also gives the department a significant track record on which to base hiring decisions, he said.

But holding on to dispatchers has been the biggest staffing issue in Stow, said Chief Mark Trefry. The department has four dispatchers and eight part-time police officers, in addition to 11 full-time officers, he said. Dispatch positions "don't pay much," and with such a small department, full-time vacancies are fairly rare, he said. Many dispatchers take the job hoping to get on the Stow department, Trefry said, then end up leaving for jobs as police officers in other communities.