Police recruits line up for jobs in

Vallejo

             Setting the Record Straight with City Manager Dan Keen

 The following is in response to an email inquiry sent to Vallejo City Manager Dan Keen by VIB 

 VIB email HERE
 

1/10/13

Hi Marc -

Thanks for asking these questions.  There appears to be a lot of misinformation floating around about our police officer recruitment efforts, and your questions give me an opportunity to set the record straight.

Contrary to the suggestions made at Tuesday night's council meeting and on the Internet blogs, we are receiving many applications right now for our vacant police officer positions.  For example, a recruitment was conducted at the end of last year to fill the five "Measure B" positions; we required that the applicants to have a POST certificate but not be current members of PERS (this was in accordance with the City Council's desire that these new hires be enrolled in the new, lower PERS pension formulas that become effective on January 1).  In response to this recruitment, we received 162 applications, and we are now in the process of interviewing the 18 most qualified applicants in this pool.

We have two ongoing/continuous recruitments for police officers as well.  One is for Police Officer/Lateral (requiring a POST certificate and one year of experience), and the other is for Police Officer/Entry Level (requiring a POST certificate only).  Since December 1, we have received 22 applications from Lateral applicants, and 149 for the Entry Level position. 

Finally, we have a number of active Eligible Lists (21) with a total of about 100 lateral candidates that meet minimum qualifications, and that are still under review by the Human Resources and Police Departments.

As you can see, we are not having difficulty attracting applicants for the Vallejo Police Department.  Nevertheless, we will be further ramping up our recruiting efforts in the next couple of months by visiting local police academies, colleges and other venues in an effort to promote the City of Vallejo as a good career choice for those wanting to be a police officer.

In response to a couple of other questions below, we do look to our cadet ranks for police officers, and in fact have a couple of cadets in academies now, with another soon to start.  We have no plans to start a Vallejo police academy at this time.

I hope this information adequately responds to your questions.  Please let me know if you need additional clarification.

Dan Keen

City Manager