Albuquerque Police Department seeing increase in recruits
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) –Following a national trend, the Albuquerque Police Department says it’s seeing more cadets joining the force after years of declining interest and a flood of retirements. “Obviously during 2020 and a lot of the things that happened around George Floyd, there was a lot of exodus from policing,” said APD Chief Harold Medina.
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It’s been an issue for years, waning interest in becoming a police officer has left APD struggling to hit its goal of at least 1,000 sworn officers. “We currently have somewhere around 885 sworn officers,” said Medina.
Medina says 1,000 officers could now be just around the corner. “We are working on our second academy class with 45-plus people in the fall. We started a class last year and we graduated 51 and we currently have 49 in the academy in one academy class and we have an additional class started of 23,” said Medina.
That’s 72 cadets, waiting to join the team and well over the 20 to 30 cadet classes they’ve seen in recent years. Medina says they’ve also seen an increase in police service aides from around 40 to 90.”We know that’s a big recruiting tool for us because every two years those 90 should become eligible and hopefully become officers,” said Medina.
APD has also struggled with retaining officers but Medina says they’re now seeing more officers stay on the force due to changes in state law surrounding officer retirement funds. “Officers can now stay, where in the past they left at 70 percent at 20 years, now at somewhere near 28-point-5 they can be at 100 percent of their wages for the rest of their life,” said Medina.
While the chief thinks the department is trending in the right direction, 1,000 officers would still be over a hundred bodies short of what the department is budgeted for. “I’d love for us to have 11 hundred officers but the first step is a thousand,” said Medina.
Chief Medina says he’s also expecting more retired officers to come back this July when a new state law goes into effect allowing retirees to rejoin the force without suspending their pension payments.
APD has also lost a handful of officers amid the continued DWI dismissal scandal. Chief Medina said Wednesday, “Each one that chooses to leave is a step forward in accountability.”
