APD lowers college requirement
City plans to attract police cadets with flexible plan for ‘exceptional candidates’
Mayor Richard Berry said Monday that his administration will loosen some of the college requirements for new police cadets as City Hall continues to search for ways to bolster the police force.
Applicants with a strong work history — but no college credit — will now be allowed to start the police academy at age 24, but they will have to reach the required 60 college credits within three years or face termination.
Completion of the academy itself provides 28 credits through Central New Mexico Community College. That would leave 32 hours for the new officers to complete over a three-year period afterward.
Berry said the more flexible approach is needed to ensure the col lege requirement doesn’t inadvertently weed out
otherwise great candidates.
And it won’t be available to everyone — “only if you pass muster as an exceptional candidate,” the mayor said.
“We want to make sure we recruit quality, not just quantity,” Berry told reporters on Monday.
There will be a variety of other incentives, too, aimed at bolstering the police force. A $5,000 bonus, for example, will now be offered to police officers who transfer to Albuquerque from other departments.
The announcement comes as Albuquerque faces a shrinking police force. It now has 878 sworn officers, the fewest since 2001 and 20 percent fewer than five years ago.
The shortage also coincides with an effort to overhaul APD’s policies and procedures. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation found last year that local police have a pattern or practice of violating people’s rights through the use of force.
Police Chief Gorden Eden said the department doesn’t want to miss people simply because they had to drop out of college to work. Under the “exceptional candidate” program, the city will pay for the new recruits to get their associate’s degrees, which takes roughly 60 credit hours.
“We’re after that person with a servant’s heart,” Eden said, referring to public service.
Deputy Police Chief William Roseman said Albuquerque’s college requirements are unusually high compared with those of several other departments in the region.
In some cases, Eden said, the city is losing great candidates to other places because of the college requirement.
The city now has two cadet classes in progress, one with 17 people, the other with 18. Roseman said that’s far fewer than his goal, which is to have 30 to 35 cadets in a class.
There is a tremendous winnowing process even to get to the academy, Eden said. Some 1,500 people might apply for an academy class, he said, but only about 200 will show up for testing.
Then perhaps only 25 will have passed the written, physical and psychological tests, Eden said.
The goal is to continue to find good candidates, even if flexibility is needed for the college requirement, he said.
“Quality has to be No. 1,” Eden said. “We cannot deviate.”
Under the current system, Roseman said, officers generally must have either four years of military experience or 60 college credits.
Stephanie Lopez, president of the police union, said she is “ecstatic” about the new flexibility for college credits. It will help single parents and others who have had to work, without much time for school.
“We feel this will be benefi- cial to our community,” she said.
Berry’s proposed city budget for next year doesn’t include a pay raise for most officers, but it does include $1.7 million to continue a new incentive program that offers $6,000 to $12,000 to officers who are nearing retirement but willing to stay on.
Berry said he will also continue to push for “return-towork” legislation at the state level, which would allow officers to work without putting their pensions on hold.