Edmonton police scrambling for recruits in competitive market
The Edmonton Police Service must shoulder some of the blame for the shortage of candidates wanting to become officers, says Chief Rod Knecht.
"I think we became a little bit arrogant," he told media last week. "We made the assumption that everybody wants to become a police officer.
"We had a failure in marketing. We have to get better at marketing."
Ten or 20 years ago candidates were lining up to become police officers, he said. That's no longer the case.
"Historically we didn't have to work at it," Knecht said. "They were coming through the door."
The EPS is aggressively recruiting officers to meet the city's surging population growth and a wave of retirements.
This year the service hired about 120 recruits plus another 20 experienced officers from other services.
Knecht wants to bump that number to about 185 new officers next year.
The slowdown in Alberta's oil patch may help, he said.
"We had such a robust job market there was a lot of opportunity to make a lot of money in a short period of time," he said.
"If you can make $140,000, $160,000 driving a truck and you make $80,000 as a police officer, you might say, 'I'm doing this for a while'."
The Edmonton police service is going through a massive turnover as officers hired in the last recruiting blitz 25 or 30 years ago retire, Knecht said.
"The majority of our people on the frontline right now have less than five years service. We lose a lot of expertise, but young people come with new ideas, they're tech savvy, they're motivated, they're interested, they want to do different things."
Knecht said a policing career is ideal for young people who now want more than one career over their working lives.
"I did multiple jobs in one career," he said. "I did drug work, I did customs and excise, I did money laundering, I did patrol work, northern policing, first nation policing.
"It is a good career. We have failed to market it properly."
And Edmonton is the best place to start a policing career, he said.
"It's an exciting time to be in Edmonton quite frankly. There's so much going on in the city right now."
