It’s police recruitment season, but filling vacancies is a struggle across Maryland

A Prince George’s County Police cruiser in a 2023 file photo. A tight labor market has hit police recruiting hard. Photo by Dave Dildine/WTOP

By Henry J. Brown

Maryland has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, which would typically be considered a bright spot for the state’s economy. But for companies and government agencies searching for workers, Maryland’s low unemployment is a problem that’s leading to labor shortages.

One of the hardest hit industries is law enforcement.

As police recruitment season kicks off — it generally runs from April to June — police departments across the state are recruiting more aggressively than ever to fill patrol cars. Many are offering larger salaries and bigger signing bonuses.

“There are many occupational categories that suffer worker and skill shortfalls,” said Anirban Basu, chief executive of Sage Policy Group, an economic consulting firm in Baltimore. “But the most visible of these categories are public safety officials or police officers in particular.

“There are so many other occupational categories that are actively hiring right now that naturally it is difficult for departments to recruit sufficient numbers of officers,” Basu said.

The shortage of police officers is most severe in Baltimore city and county.

“We’re so short now, we can’t be all things to all people,” meaning police departments are taking officers away from paperwork and putting them on more pressing work, said Dave Rose, president of Baltimore County Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 4.

Currently, the department has 235 vacant jobs out of a total sworn force of 1,950.

“If you’ve ever watched an Orioles game, we’ve got ‘Baltimore County is hiring’ signs everywhere,” he said.

Baltimore City, Maryland’s largest municipality, is short nearly 600 officers compared from its authorized 3,100. The city increased its starting pay to $61,349 last July in an attempt to fill vacancies, but still has a long way to go, according to the department.

Smaller cities like Ocean City are having trouble competing against larger departments for applicants. The seaside vacation town said earlier this year that it would end its summer hiring program due to a sharp drop in applicants, and will instead seek to hire more full-time officers.

In a news release on its website, the department said “the law enforcement career field used to be very competitive, with few vacancies. As interest in law enforcement has downshifted, most agencies are now competing against one another to fill their spots from a smaller applicant pool.”

Many states, not just Maryland, are facing similar recruiting problems.

The job is dangerous and the image of law enforcement has been tarnished in recent years by high-profile cases across the country of excessive force, which in some cases have led to officers being prosecuted.

“It is a difficult moment in history to be a police officer,” Basu said.

But Maryland has some unique issues. The biggest issue is pay, which has not kept pace with the state’s high cost of living: Maryland home prices have risen more than 50% over the past 10 years, for example, and averaged $473,442 in March, according to the Maryland Association of Realtors.

Police officer salaries have also risen, but police union leaders and some politicians argue that they still do not compare to other civil service jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that median pay for police officers in Maryland was about $76,000 in 2023, slightly ahead of the national median average of $74,910. But education administrators had median wages of $125,720 that year.

The high cost of housing has prompted a growing number of workers to leave the state and move to less-expensive areas. That out-migration includes many people who might have been attracted to police work.

“If you could find a superior employment market in the South or a less-expensive cost of living, why wouldn’t one pursue that?” Basu asked.

Recruitment has also been hurt by growing anti-police sentiment in the aftermath of several high-profile police encounters across the nation that led to protests and charges of excessive force. That includes the 2015 death of Freddie Gray Jr., a 25-year-old African American who suffered fatal injuries while under Baltimore Police custody, after he was apprehended for possessing a knife.

Some police officers believe that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump also turned some potential police recruits away.

“On Jan. 6, officers were put in a position where their lives were at risk. I think that was an eye-opener for a lot of our candidates who were interested and backed out,” said Lt. Sean Schwartz, a hiring strategist for Bowie Police. The department is currently eight officers shy of a 67-officer minimum.

“We’re all hands on in putting in our effort in speaking to people … and sharing the good things about the police department,” Schwartz said.

Bowie City Councilman Michael Estéve has spent several years trying to lift police pay and benefits. Starting salaries are not as high as he would like, but he says that officers who stay on the job will do well in the long term.

“The benefits accrue, so if you stay in the profession for 25, 35 years, you can retire very comfortably,” he said.

Bowie currently offers a starting salary of $59,020, with signing bonuses of $15,000 to $20,000 depending on an officer’s prior experience. But Bowie Police Chief Dwayne Preston is still scrambling to find recruits.

“I’ve done a lot of talk shows, I’ve done a lot of advertising with social media, we’ve changed incentives and raised signing bonuses with the support of the city council and city manager to make us competitive,” he said.

The department also attends career fairs and looks for new ways to engage with younger members of the community, which it hopes will help with recruitment in the future.

One recent Saturday afternoon, a dozen Bowie police officers squared off against Benjamin Tasker Middle School’s basketball team in a friendly exhibition game. Though the edge went to the students, the mission succeeded in helping officers interact with students in a positive atmosphere.

“We start to get busy with a lot of the community events that we do throughout the spring, throughout the summer, but these are the things that are most fulfilling to us,” Preston said. “That’s one of the things that allows us…to serve this community in such a way that they feel like they appreciate it.”

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