By Andrew Edwards
Elmore/Autauga News Staff Writer
At Tuesday night’s Prattville City Council meeting, councilmembers unanimously voted to pass two resolutions implementing a Police Officer Recruitment and Education/Certification Program.
The police officer recruitment program would be available to new, post-certified hires looking to become a part of the City of Prattville’s Police Department. At its core, the program would incentivize people interesting in joining the PPD with $7,500 extra dollars. $3,750 of the total amount would be paid upon the new employees first paycheck, while the rest would be given after the officer’s probation period and subsequent internal training is completed – which takes roughly nine months.
“We feel like this will bring in 3-5 year veterans of law enforcement to our team,” said Prattville Chief of Police, Mark Thompson.
Thompson explained that the City of Prattville currently has 80 officers, but are slotted to have up to 91. He attributes some of that to retirements over the past several years, leaving the PPD with a young core of up-and-coming first responders.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen us at full-capacity in the eight years that I’ve been here,” Thompson said.
The education and certification program will similarly help to attract new officers, but also retain the ones already within the system.
This program is applicable to those with a law-enforcement related degree, and officers with an associate’s degree receive a 2.5% yearly pay increase, a bachelor’s degree a 5% pay increase, and a master’s degree or FBI Academy graduate will receive a 7.5% pay increase.
It will also encourage those who do not have a degree to pursue one, says City of Prattville Finance Director Daniel Oakley. The city currently offers higher learning benefits/opportunities to their employees, such as tuition breaks.
Oakley says the city fully intends to maintain this program moving forward.
“This is something that a lot of cities don’t have currently, and it puts us in a progressive step to lead in the area and across the state. We’re confident that it will help to attract and retain the best officers,” Oakley said.
Thompson, who’s utmost priority is to protect and serve the people of Prattville, only wants to hire the best, most-qualified officers. He not only wants people who will do their job correctly, but ones who will immerse themselves within the community.
“We may have 70 applicants who want to be apart of the PPD and only five get an interview. Then, maybe only two of them actually pass and move on. We have a really strict testing procedure that starts with a comprehension test, then a PT test, an extensive background investigation, and a psychological profile test. They also have to stand before two boards, and we’re not getting a lot of people to pass all of that,” Thompson explained.
“I want our officers to be out there, be pro-active and fight crime. But I also want them to go into the neighborhoods and get to know the people that we’re here to serve. We’re going to treat everybody fairly, but we want respect for our officers as well. If they treat you fair, I want these officers treated fairly too.”
Thompson said the reputation of the police force has greatly diminished over the past year, which has made hiring more difficult.
“Because of media coverage and the way that the nation has profiled police officers, a lot of people don’t want to do this anymore. People hear about incidents that are going on in other cities and want to judge us about for what’s going on out there, but at the end of the day we have a proven record that we’re going to be fair and impartial,” Thompson explained.
Thompson said he’s very appreciative of the programs that will be implemented, but that he’s not sure if he will ever see a full staff. Instead, he will focus on making sure that every officer treats the citizens of Prattville with the utmost respect.
“We encourage our younger officers to get out and go in the stores, see somebody on the street, and get out and be known. We live here, we want things, we want the best of schools and for families to go shopping and feel safe. We’re part of Prattville, too” Thompson said.
