APD drawing officers from coast-to-coast

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Austin’s police chief wants to step up a special recruiting program to bring in more experienced officers from other agencies and cities. One obvious benefit is getting new officers patrolling the streets in half the time as a regular 32-week recruiting class.

Getting more officers patrolling is a priority for Art Acevedo.

An independent report in July 2012 from the Police Executive Research Forum found the city’s police department needs 257 officers by 2017 to approach the national average of 2.4 officers per thousand residents. By then, the report said, Austin’s population will near one million people.

Chief Acevedo told KXAN Friday he would like the city to hire as many as 450 more officers to keep up with the staffing formula.

The department added 15 new officers in mid-July to its force, but Acevedo said it was one of the smallest classes in recent years -- a size directly impacted by city budget constraints.

While it brought the force's numbers to 1,646 officers, it was still short of a full, sworn staff component closer to 1,700.

Right now at Austin’s Police Academy in the city’s southeast end, a class of 22 officers is making its way through what is known as modified training. This day, it was taser training. And like other lessons, it was a refresher for most here, and a painful one at that.

One by one, the recruits submitted to a taser shot fired by a training officer so they could experience the brief, crippling jolt of electricity meant to temporarily incapacitate the recipient.

Other recruits held their colleagues under their arms to help them to a soft, safe landing on a blue foam mat. Along the way, the cadets were reminded of different scenarios where they might be forced to deploy this less-than lethal policing tool.

The modified recruits come from nearby - like the Hays County Sheriff’s Office and Dallas - and from far away, too. Recruits from San Diego and San Jose as well as other much larger urban centers make up the class.

Officer cadet Milton Del Valle spent six years in the NYPD in South Queens and moved to as he put it, ‘get out of the rat race.’

“I had my fill of New York. (I was) born and raised there I was ready to show my wife and daughter a different way of life. I want her to grow up in a safer city," said Del Valle.

Since the recruits already have many of the skills and certifications in hand from their prior employers, as well as real time on the job, the department gets these experienced officers on the streets of Austin more quickly.

It can be as few as 17 weeks once they are accepted into the program.

Each has passed an equivalency exam to ensure they meet the standards of a peace officer in the state of Texas. When they graduate, these officers will be paid as second-year officers, despite their prior time on the job elsewhere. The City of Austin police pay schedule for 2012-2013 lists that annual salary as $68,819. 

During training, officer cadets earn the annual equivalent of $32,000. Moving these seasoned officers through the system in half the time means they benefit from less time having to absorb an effective pay cut.

Officer cadet Ian Erickson served with the US Marine Corps before serving five more years policing the web of neighborhoods around Los Angeles – including narcotics investigations. Now, a smaller city holds appeal for his career.

“(It’s) a different aspect of police work. A little bit smaller community, different types of crimes, different crime locations, different problem areas to concentrate on and other things I probably haven’t seen yet," he said.

The other factor APD training supervisors look for is the recruits’ ability to adjust to the more liberal, community-oriented culture of Austin.

"It’s a challenge for us to bring them here to this new culture," said Cadet Training Supervisor, Sgt. Zac Pruett.

“We’re very frank with them and this is what you’re going to encounter, this is what you’re going to embrace and so that message starts early," Pruett said.

The current group of modified recruits is due to graduate in the late spring. The chief hopes a second modified training class will start next January and continue annually after that.