ROCK ISLAND, Ill. — The Rock Island Police Department on Monday swore in four new officers on Monday, Aug. 22. This brings the total number of sworn officers to 75, but the department is still facing a staffing shortage.
Chief Richard Landi said the department is hoping to hire eight more to fill openings and upcoming retirements, but the shortage is slowly improving. In Nov. 2021 when he was interim chief, Rock Island Police was short 16 officers.
It doesn't include civilian positions which are also short staffed, including in the communications center and support division, Landi said.
During this most recent round of hiring, only the four sworn in on Monday were eligible, of the nine applications submitted to the department. The candidates were chosen following written and physical agility tests, background investigations and interviews with the police and fire commission.
"When I tested back in 1993, I think they said we had like 600 or 700 applicants, and when I was at the Carver Center at Augustana College for the physical agility test, there was over 400 people there," Landi said. "I never expected to see this. I don't think any of us did. We've always seen the numbers come down a little bit since the height of the 90s, but never like this."
Landi attributes the shortage to generational differences. The newer generations are looking to work in a career that's different from what law enforcement has to offer, he said, and the negative perception of law enforcement in recent years has contributed to that as well.
Landi added that COVID-19 shut the police academy down.
"Even if I could hire somebody, I didn't have any sports to send to the academy," Landi said. "Just now the academy spots are starting to open back up again, and we're starting to get people in."
The shortage of officers has meant the department has had to prioritize using the officers it does have.
"The number one thing we do is, of course, having officers on the street to respond to calls for service," Landi said. "The second important thing is having criminal investigations in place so we can handle major class. We have shooting investigations, other felony crimes; we got to have those individuals in place. Then, of course, we have to have a support services staff to make everything work. We have to have squad cars, we got to have reports done."
Ahead of the 2020-21 school year, the department announced it was unable to staff two positions for the School Resource Office (SRO) program at Rock Island-Milan schools due to the shortage.
"A Special Investigations Division and Tactical Operations Division, we had to shut that down a little more than a year ago," Landi said. "Whether it's community engagement, school resource officers, school functions, all those things there, we couldn't do without the sufficient manpower."
One thing the Rock Island Police Department has done well, Landi said, is using technology to supplement the shortages.
"Instead of having to have film, or little basically SD cards, (that were used to photograph scenes) that were sent to services to be downloaded and filed, all that's done directly from the officer from the scene directly into the cloud and into evidence," he said. "We're taking out some of that support staff time that we don't have to tie up there... We've got cameras throughout the city. We're continuing to build on our camera network."
Landi is confident the department will be fully staffed by next year and hopes the four newly sworn-in officers will bring the next generation of officers the department needs to fill future vacancies.