Now that the worst fiscal crisis in the modern history of Baltimore has been resolved and critical funding has been restored to the Baltimore Police Department budget, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld announced a detailed plan last week to hire 100 new police officers by the end of 2010 and another 350 police officers in 2011. The new plan will keep pace with normal attrition rates and fill recently restored positions in the Baltimore Police Department budget.
"Public safety is and will remain a top priority of my administration. With my Comprehensive Budget Plan in place, we have restored every single police officer position in the Police Department budget," Mayor Rawlings-Blake says. "Now the focus must be on continued, strong hiring efforts to ensure that budgeted police officer positions remain filled."
The police officer hiring plan calls for additional measures to enhance and expedite the Police Department's hiring process to keep pace with normal retirement trends including:
- Hiring two additional certified consultants to conduct polygraph screenings;
- Hiring up to 9 contractual employees to conduct background investigations in order to clear a processing backlog of applications from new recruits;
- Create a processing unit by consolidating several smaller units that will track and distribute cases, complete civil service testing, schedule various forms of physical/psychological/polygraph testing, etc. This unit will determine the applicants that proceed to a background investigation;
- Create a third background investigation squad to handle the large volume of applicants. At present there are over 80 cases in the background process and over 120 awaiting the assignment of a background investigator; and,
- The Police Department will implement additional testing opportunities for applicants.
"Despite a very difficult budget situation, Mayor Rawlings-Blake is providing the resources my department needs to ramp-up our plan to hire hundreds of new Police officers this year and next," Commissioner Bealefeld says.
Source: The Mayor's Office
Writer: Walaika Haskins