This month, for the first time in nearly a decade, the Statesboro Police Department is set to have its fully authorized number of officers “on the roster” if not yet all on the street. The city administration halted hiring bonuses March 1, but improved pay based on a beginning officer salary of $55,476 remains in effect.

That full roster will include the 79 sworn police officers of all ranks authorized by Statesboro City Council in its current budget. But City Manager Charles W. Penny has authorized Chief of Police Charles “Mike” Broadhead to “over hire” by up to four officers. Both the manager and the chief say the department has officers in training at the Georgia Police Academy and job offers now out to applicants sufficient to meet both milestones.

In an interview last week, Broadhead indicated that a new hire arriving Monday, March 10, would become the 78th officer on the force. Meanwhile, the SPD command staff and city human resources office had made conditional offers to five people who will be hired provided that they pass required background checks, including polygraph testing and psychological evaluation.

“So that would put us at 83, which is 79 plus four,” Broadhead said. “And so it’s really a question of getting the paperwork done and making sure that all the people pass their backgrounds, but I think it’s very safe to say that we’ll be, at the least, full to 79 this month, and then by the next month I think we’ll be at full-plus.”

This is, he said, probably the first time the SPD has been “in that position, maybe ever,” during his eight years as its chief, “so that’s great to see.”

Months of training

But those will be only the totals “on the roster,” so the department still has some months to go to have that many cops working Statesboro’s streets with independent patrol and arrest powers.

As of last week, the SPD had seven fairly recently recruited officers who are academy graduates but are now in field training, often called “FTO” because the new officers are assigned to “field training officers” – experienced officers in the department – for about 16 weeks of supervised on-the-job training and evaluation. Those seven should complete field training at various times from now to June.

Meanwhile, two officer recruits who have already been hired and are counted “on the roster” are at the academy, and should graduate and be ready to begin field training in July. Broadhead notes that the process is now taking longer.

Effective with the class now in session since January, the Georgia Police Academy training for new officers increased in length from the previous 12 weeks to about five months, substantially raising Georgia’s ranking from its previous 49th among the states. (As of last year, Hawaii reportedly was 50th, with no required training hours.)

“And then I think we’re going to have nine in the next academy class, which will start in July, but that should put us at plus-four,” he said.

When Broadhead arrived as Statesboro’s police chief in April 2017, the SPD’s authorized force, as budgeted by the mayor and council at the time, was 74 officers, so the elected officials budgeted for five additional officers after that. But he does not recall going over the 74- or 75-officer mark in these eight years. The number on the force fluctuated down with retirements and departures and up a little with recruiting efforts, and then went into a slide with the COVID-19 pandemic and national protests against police-involved deaths.

Back from a low point

“A year and a half ago we were short 17 people, and so it’s been nice to come charging back,” Broadhead said.

He recalled the situation of 2022 to mid-2023.

“We were so far below market (in salaries) that it was difficult,” Broadhead said. “There was a lot of push in our region for better wages, and that happened before we were able to get it done. Ports (the Georgia Ports Authority, including its police force) was hiring a lot of people, and after COVID it became difficult to find people who even wanted to do this job.”

City Council in December 2022 approved a $3,000 raise in beginning pay for police officers and firefighters as of January 2023. That made the SPD’s starting pay about $43,700, still midrange among comparable-size cities in the region that were cited at the time, such as Hinesville, Pooler and Garden City.

“What we heard consistently in exit interviews was people thought the pay was not good for the amount of call volume, and they thought they were working too hard for the amount of money we were providing,” Broadhead recalled last week.

In fall 2023, Statesboro City Council authorized a pay scale study by the consulting firm Condrey & Associates, with public safety salaries cited as the reason. The mayor and council ended up approving a new pay plan that boosted wages in all of the city’s departments to 105% of the comparable market average effective January 2024. The beginning police salary topped $55,000.

The mayor and council also approved increasing one-time signing bonuses to $2,500 for officer recruits yet to be certified, $5,000 for certified officers with three to five years of experience, and $10,000 for certified officers with more than five years of experience. The department also offered officers already on the force – command ranks and the recruiting sergeant reportedly were not eligible – a recruiting bonus of $1,000 if they recruited a new officer who needed to go to the academy or a $2,000 bonus if they recruited an already certified officer.

Some recruiting bonuses were collected by a few officers who brought in new hires, and at least two $10,000 signing bonuses and one $5,000 bonus were paid to experienced “lateral move” officers hired from other departments, Broadhead recalled.

New ‘momentum’

But the police chief believes that improved salary have had the largest effect, with results he hopes will last.

“I think that the increased wages put us at a much more competitive place, the bonuses made us more competitive, and then as the numbers increased and improved, it starts that momentum – right? – because as people leave you sort of get a negative momentum where people go, ‘Well, jeez, everybody else is leaving, what am I missing out on?’ and then the exact opposite happens as people get hired,” Broadhead said.

Limited over-hiring

Meanwhile, the council and city manager stopped adding to the number of authorized officers about three years ago while waiting for vacancies to be filled, but Penny introduced the idea of allowing the police chief eventually to “over hire” a few officers whose pay and benefits are not in the council-approved budget. A 2022 Georgia law, enacted in reaction to “defund the police” slogans, bars cities and counties from reducing police budgets by more than 5% in one year or more than 25% over five years, so over-hiring may allow more budgeting flexibility until the additional positions are filled and made permanent.

Penny informed the mayor and council during their March 4 meeting that the hiring bonuses had been halted.

“About 18 months ago our mayor and council stood up with us to reduce the number of vacancies in the Police Department, and you also funded hiring bonuses,” Penny said. “This morning I want to let you know that as of March 1st, we’ve discontinued the hiring bonuses, because essentially Chief Mike and his team, along with employees have done a tremendous job to wipe out that number of vacancies.

“We may have three vacancies, but we’ve got people in the pipeline. In fact, I didn’t think Mike would do this to me,” Penny teased, “but he’s got enough people in the pipeline that we’re over hiring …, and so for the first time in long time we should essentially be fully staffed at the Police Department.”