Recommendation to adopt resolution amending the Fiscal Year 2022 City Salary Resolution to include a Lateral Police Officer Incentive Program.  (Citywide)
Motion is carried. 23 Report from Human Resources Recommendation to adopt a resolution amending the fiscal year 2020 to City Salary Resolution to include a lateral police officer incentive program citywide. There's a motion and a second is for public comment on this. A public comment. Mr. Murdoch added, You need to give any update here or. Just that we have two items in front of you tonight. Both are to able to attract. Individuals coming from other agencies into our city. We are doing everything we can to try to increase hiring. And so this is one of our items. This one in particular. Is a an incentive to bring over lateral police officers. It takes about a year and a half to almost two years from the time you train and recruit a police officer to the time that they can serve on the streets. And so if you do a lateral where you're bringing. Someone in from another agency, that can be done in a matter of, you know, of weeks, essentially. So this is a $15,000 incentive. And it's also structured to make sure that that employee stays with us at least a year and try to make sure they have a long career here in Long Beach. So we're very supportive of this and ask for your approval. We have a motion in a second. Councilman Austin, did you have a question? I just had a really quick question regarding the the benefit of the lateral. Can you explain what it costs to to go through a police academy and to train an officer? We don't have those exact costs right now. But I think it's a it's pretty costly and timely to put somebody from the beginning of the academy through the process. And so I think this would be a way to really expedite the process, like Mr. Modica said, and give us another tool in the tool chest for recruit recruiting experience candidates. Well, I don't have costs. I can talk a little. Bit about the process. It takes about a year for you to go through a recruitment. Process, through civil service, to create the tests. To create the list. We then do an extensive, extensive background on anybody who's coming into our to our organization, which includes going out and talking to anyone who, you know, they've had contact with and really understanding that person's history. You do that as well when you do laterals. But you can do it in a in a more compressed. Timeframe. You don't have the long. Recruitment and then you put them through an actual academy. And then after the academy, you also have field training. And so that person goes does not go out by themselves into the field. They actually work with an officer to train them and they do that for an extended period of time. And so altogether that is a very expensive model that we have. And this actually is a very efficient way to bring on officers quickly. And my follow up question is, what do you say to someone who says that we may be getting somebody else's discarded officer or somebody who didn't cut it in another department? What kind of provisions are we putting in place to ensure that we're getting quality? Yes. So we would put every officer that's. Doing a lateral through an intense review process. Just like we would any new employee. But in this case, you're actually able to really. Delve into their background because they've been an experienced police officer. And so we have a number of tools that we use through our process to make sure that we understand that person's background. And then we are able to make selections based on, you know, what, what type of officer we're going to want to have in our in our in our organization. We still put them through training. We still do things in language. You want to make sure they know about our culture. We want to know that they know our training programs. And so a lot of officers also get trained as they come on so that we make sure that they're consistent with our policies and practices. Thank you very much, Senator. Second, there is no public comment, so please cast your votes.