Kent Police seek to expand force

Kent Police are trying a few new strategies to get the number of officers up to 165 from 147 by the year 2020.

The department has 139 officers on staff, although it is authorized to employ 147 under its 2015 budget approved by the City Council. The number lags because it takes time to get new hires through the police academy, Police Chief Ken Thomas said to the council’s Public Safety Committee during a Nov. 10 report.

Thomas switched a patrol officer to work full-time in recruiting in an effort to boost the numbers. That recruiter recently visited Washington State University in Pullman in an effort to get new recruits right out of college.

Two officers have been hired but haven’t started yet, two others have conditional offers and there are four vacancies, Thomas said. Thomas recently conducted interviews to fill the vacant spots.

“By 2020 it would be ideal if we could get up to adding 16 or so additional officers in the next four years,” Thomas said.

The proposed city budget for 2016 approves boosting the number of officers to 150 for a city population of more than 124,000.

“We are going to explore instead of hiring a few at a time, we want to go to civil service and ask for a big push to get a bunch of people – get them hired in larger chunks earlier on or we are going to get the same results,” Thomas said about being understaffed.

The chief said the force can be down as many as 25-30 officers during an average month. But with seven officers in training and two just graduated from the police academy, the numbers are going up. Five officers are out with injuries. But Thomas expects by early next year to be down just 15 officers with the help of three new positions.

Councilman Les Thomas said he heard Normandy Park might be laying off officers as part of a budget cutback and wondered if Kent had looked to hire officers from that city.

Chief Thomas said Kent will look at Normandy Park and has checked with other financially strapped cities such as Memphis, Tenn., and a few in California. Kent can fill spots much quicker if it hires officers from other police departments because they don’t have to go through the police academy.

But other local cities and the King County Sheriff’s Office also are looking to hire.

“If officers in Normandy Park are losing their job, there is going to be fierce competition,” Thomas said. “We will have our name in the hat but so will King County, Renton and other cities. If you are a candidate or lateral officer, you are in very high demand.”

Thomas said he recently met with his assistant chiefs and asked them what they need in terms of officers to run their division. He said he also looked at comparable cities to get an idea of how many officers the force needs and that’s how he came up with 165 for Kent, with an effort to keep overtime costs down.

“We look at our comparable cities and officers per 1,000 residents and for Kent to be in the middle of comparable cities we would need 170, so we are close,” Thomas said.

“My job is to get them (staff) the resources to do a good job for our community, and right now we are straining a little bit and I don’t know if it’s sustainable,” Thomas said. “It’s causing incredible stress on our staff.”