HARTFORD — The Hartford Police Department is a facing a potential monthslong problem: It has seven vacancies on its 23-person force, and officers still on the beat have been feeling the strain and eating into the overtime budget.
What’s more, town officials working to find new recruits for the open positions say the task has not been easy — especially amid national and local scrutiny over the role of local policing.
“Right now the profession of being a law enforcement officer is taking a hit,” Selectboard member Joe Major said Friday, adding that the empty positions present a “long-term, difficult situation.”
Major is working with Interim Police Chief Brad Vail to help find diverse recruits for the department, which is operating at about 70% capacity.
The seven vacancies is unusually high for the department, which normally has about two — or at most, four — posts to fill, Vail said in an email this week. The open spots include the permanent police chief position, which opened up after former Police Chief Phil Kasten left in February, as well as a lieutenant position and a detective position, Vail said.
“Officer wellness is a high priority as it can have other effects if not maintained,” Vail wrote, explaining that officers have to take more overtime and can feel exhausted because of the diminished force. Town officials said officers have been taking overtime because of the staffing situation but said they did not have the numbers immediately available.
But the impact extends beyond the individual officers to the community as a whole; Vail said that with minimum staffing, “response times to lower-priority calls can be affected” and police don’t have the same time for “proactive operations,” like highway safety campaigns, he said.
A Valley News analysis last year of six municipal police budgets in the Upper Valley found that Hartford’s police budget had increased by 52% in the past decade, from $2.2 million to $3.3 million, and that the police share of general fund spending had gone from 18.1% to 19.6%.
Despite the need for more officers, officials say it’s been difficult to add recruits quickly, partly because new officers would have to undergo a 16-week basic training course at the state’s police academy before they could begin work, which adds another step that prolongs the search, Town Manager Tracy Yarlott-Davis said.
Additionally, Hartford is one of many departments throughout the state looking to hire new recruits, she said.
“It’s hard to scream through all that mess,” she said of making Hartford stand out to new candidates.
Yarlott-Davis said her office is also in the early stages of looking for Kasten’s replacement, and Hartford officials plan to get input from community members about what they want in their next police chief before taking applications.
Vail pointed to other issues that have deterred some younger people from seeking careers in law enforcement, like the time and effort the job can take.
“Not everyone wants to accept a job where one has to work nights, weekends, holidays, rotating shifts, etc. This newer generation does not seem to think about job security and will hop around from job to job,” Vail wrote.
Another key deterrent seems to be the national discussions over the role of policing, spurred in part by countrywide protests last year over police brutality against people of color, according to Major and Vail.
“Those professions have not come under the best light for different reasons, some justified, some not so justified,” Major said of careers in law enforcement. “With anything like that, it’s going to be tough to convince people to come in and have that as your profession.”
That aspect has made the process of hiring qualified, diverse candidates even more difficult, according to Major.
In recent months, Major said, he has been reaching out to historically Black colleges and universities, like his own alma mater, Howard University, to try to recruit people of color to the force.
“The more diversity that you have in a force, the perception of the general population is that they (police) are more like the community,” Major, who is Black, said of the importance of bringing in more officers of color. “They are able to reach out to a diverse population because they come from the same backgrounds and cultures.”
But because of the racial demographics of Vermont, which is over 94% white according to a 2019 U.S. Census, and the recent protests over police brutality, the task of hiring a more diverse staff is “doubly difficult,” he said.
As department officials continue to look for recruits by attending job fairs, reaching out to military contacts, and participating in college career programs, some in the community wonder if this is a good time to start reassessing the role — or the size — of the force for Hartford, a town of about 10,000 residents.
“It’s an opportunity to reexamine the framework of what is done with the full-capacity force and what might it look like if it were a longer-term, scaled-back force,” Selectboard member Kim Souza said Friday.
She explained that she wouldn’t expect a smaller police force to do all of the work the current force is expected to do, but said now is a perfect time to step back and look at “how we might potentially minimize the need for more officers.”
When it comes to the role police play in the community, Souza said she would like to see more officers who have a background or training in public health and mental health.
Major said he disagreed with the idea of scaling back the force, but added that police are trying to address concerns about their role in the community by hiring a social worker on staff and by starting the work to bring in a wellness coordinator, who could respond with police to mental health emergency calls.
“I think Hartford is absolutely moving toward doing things to help alleviate the stress of policing and the perception of policing,” Major said, but added, “there are not black-and-white answers.”
Yarlott-Davis has scheduled several “Town Hall Listening Sessions” this year to give members of the public a chance to voice their opinions on different issues within the town.
A Sept. 7 session will address policing along with other emergency response issues.
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.