Short nearly 200 officers,
Fairfax PD staffing 'at a crisis level' ahead of holiday season
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (7News) —
Thanksgiving tends to be one of the most dangerous and deadly times on U.S.
roads due to increases in impaired drivers and reckless driving.
Going into the holiday season,
the Fairfax County Police Department is facing a shortage of police officers –
officers who are responsible for enforcing traffic laws and getting drunk
drivers off the roads.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin
Davis said recruiting classes have gotten larger. However, the Fairfax County
Police Department is still facing a staffing crisis.
“When you’re down around 200
officers and you’ve disbanded your specialty units, of course, it’s at a crisis
level,” Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity told 7News on Tuesday.
Herrity says The Fairfax County
Board of Supervisors needs to focus on keeping current officers by paying them
more.
“We’ve seen increases in crime,
we’ve seen increased traffic accidents and pedestrians fatalities,” said
Herrity. “Public safety isn’t something you can ignore. It will catch up to you
and it is catching up with us.”
7News was the first to report the
staffing emergency at FCPD over the summer.
At that time, FCPD was short 189
officers, Davis told 7News in August.
Vacancies later reached above
200, according to police sources. Now FCPD is short 192 officers, Davis told
7News on Tuesday.
“We’ve still seen a higher rate
of resignations than retirements,” Davis told 7News. “We are doing all we can
to keep people focused on the value of policing. It’s still the greatest job in
the world. We just need to increase the volume of the right candidates who want
to do this job for the right reasons.”
Davis hopes new recruitment
efforts, including a $15,000 signing bonus for new officers, will help.
“This is a hot market and we are
all in competition with each other. The application pool has dwindled over the
past couple of years,” Davis said. “We have great support from the Board of
Supervisors and the community at large. So we have to consider many things like
compensation and financial incentives and other benefits to attract people to
the job because a police applicant in 2022 has a varied menu of choices about
where to go and young people are paying attention more now than they ever
have.”
Fairfax Co. Police Chief Kevin
Davis speaks to 7News on how the department is handling a staffing crisis
(7News)
“In about a week and a half that
192 will go to 154 when we start our largest police academy class in several
years,” added Davis.
“They're still in a crisis
level,” said Herrity. “We're still around 200 short. Through September, we had
101 officers leave. We've had a couple of recruit classes, some transfers into
a total of about 57. We got one more recruit class coming in. We're going to
have some additional resignations. So we're still at a net loss on officers. We
still got work to do.”
Herrity praised the $15,000
signing bonus for new officers, but he said it came too late. He blamed the
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for failing to act quickly enough. The
Board of Supervisors is led by Chairman Jeffrey McKay.
“I think it was late, but I'm
happy it was there,” said Herrity. “I wish we had given them the salary
increases. The best thing we can do is retain our current officers. That's going
to help a lot with bringing new officers in, but we really need to focus on
retaining current officers.”
“There were some ideas put on the
table last budget,” Herrity added. “Salary increase that got cut in half and
spread across all public safety agencies rather than given to the patrol staff
where we really need them - Second Lieutenant below. We could extend Drop. That
was also on the table. So there are some creative things that we should and can
be doing. And I hope that the board will come around on it.”
Herrity predicts more officers
will have to retire by the end of the year.
“Simply, [the ] Drop [program] is
officers pick their retirement date three years out, and they can't work past
that date,” he said. “So they’re not allowed to work past that three years. We
can extend that by a year or two years with literally no cost to the
government.”
“And the board said no?” 7News'
Nick Minock asked.
“And the board said no,” Herrity
replied.
One place some officers have gone
to is Amazon.
“Amazon is certainly a challenge
not just for Fairfax but for police departments around the country,” Davis
said. "We have to be creative We have to be the employer of choice and
there is a commitment to do so.”
But Supervisor Herrity expressed
doubt that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has that commitment.
“We need to get back to public
safety being a priority in Fairfax County," said Herrity.
Fairfax County is beginning its
budget process soon. 7News will let you know if the Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors approves pay raises for current officers - or not - to address the
staffing crisis.
“We hope we are turning the
corner a little bit on recruiting,” said Davis. “We had five Fairfax County
police officers who resigned in the last year who came back, so they came back
to the job. So that’s exciting. The grass isn’t always greener.”
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