Metro travels nations to add diversity to ranks

Scott Reeder

Tuesday, March 23, 1999 | 11:09 a.m.

Next month, 750 people will file into a classroom and take a test to become Metro Police officers.

It wouldn't be all that unusual except the test will be taken in New York City.

Recruiting aggressively in other states is part of Metro's strategy in dealing with the rapid population growth in the Las Vegas Valley.

"We are traveling around the country looking for qualified people to become officers," said Sgt. Charles Hank, who heads Metro's recruitment detail. "We select communities that have very diverse populations and recruit there."

For every 4,000 employment inquires it receives each year, Metro hires about 250 people to become police officers, he said.

Metro gives police officer exams five times a year -- twice a year in locations away from the city.

"We have to remember that people are moving to Las Vegas from many different places," Hank said. "So it is important for us to recruit in the areas people are coming here from."

In fact, the metropolitan area is growing by about 5,700 people every month, said Keith Schwer, director of UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research.

The trip to New York will cost the police department about $15,000, Hank said.

"It would cost each person about $500 to fly out here and take the test. Since we are testing 750 people, we are really saving those people almost $400,000," he said.

A key element of Metro's mission is to have a diverse workforce. Consequently, it is a major factor in how it approaches its recruiting.

"We want our police department to reflect our community. ... We need more Asian-Americans in our department. We recruited in Northern California recently because there is a large Asian population there," Hank said.

He added the department has recruited in El Paso, Texas, which has a large Hispanic population and Louisiana, which has a large black population.

Metro has developed a plan for dealing with the growth and in 1996 the voters approved a property tax levy to help pay for the additional expenses, Clark County Sheriff Jerry Keller said.

When Metro completes hiring the 450 additional officers authorized by the levy in 2002, it will cost the department an additional $32 million a year just to pay and equip them, said Lois Roethel, comptroller for Metro.

With the support from voters, Keller said funding is not the overriding issue in dealing with the population explosion, which the Las Vegas Valley has been experiencing.

Time is a much bigger concern, he said.

Keller says the pinch is finding qualified people to fill the positions and making sure current Metro officers can devote adequate time and resources to training them.

"We have the funding to be able to hire 450 officers right away," Roethel said. "But there is no way our police academy could accommodate that many people in a single year. We don't have nearly enough field training officers to train that many people in a single year. So we are hiring them over a four-year period."

The 1996 levy gives Metro enough money to hire and equip all of the new officers by June 2002.

Officer Charles Jenkins, a recruiter for Metro, said the department is adding an incentive for experienced police officers.

For the first time, officers with three years experience will be allowed into an accelerated police academy program this year. In the past, rookies and veterans trained together in a 20-week police academy program and in 18 weeks of field training.

Beginning this year, experienced officers will go through a 12-week academy program and 12 weeks of field training.

In addition to these 450 new officers, the department also will hire an additional 50 each year to replace those who have left the department, Roethel said. Metro currently has an authorized strength of 1,748 police officers. In 1984, there were 738 police officers in the department.

"Is growth paying for growth? Well, I don't know," Keller said. "It seems to me that we are always two or three years behind. When you move here, you start immediately needing the services of government. But your taxes don't catch up for two or three years. But I'm not an economist. All I can be is a cop."

As part of its overall plan for dealing with growth, Metro has established a ratio for the number of officers it should have in the community.

"Right now, we are at 1.7 officers per 1,000 and we want to go to 2 officers per thousand. The national standard for cities our size is 2.7 officers per thousand," Keller said.

James Fyfe, a nationally known professor of criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia, agreed that Las Vegas by all appearances does not have enough police officers.

"I would say the national average of 2.7 per 1000 would not be adequate for Las Vegas because you are dealing with a large tourist population in the city that also is placing a demand on police services.

"I used to be a police sergeant in Times Square. We faced similar challenges. Not only do you have have lots of visitors, but they are people out looking to have a good time -- that puts an extra demand on police services."

But Keller said Las Vegas doesn't need to meet that national standard because unlike some other cities, sworn officers are not routinely assigned to duties such as dispatching calls.

"My attitude is that cops should be out doing what cops do and civilians should do what they do do best," he said. "We don't have the degree of urban blight that they have in other communities, just by virtue of our age. We are a young, dynamic community.

"We are constantly recruiting to make sure we are only putting the very best on the streets to serve the public," he said.

The population growth also has caused the public to perceive that there is more crime being committed in the community, Keller said.

"The rate of crime here has consistently gone down during the past decade. But because of the population growth, the number of crimes has actually gone up," Keller said.

For example, there were 58 homicides in Metro's jurisdiction in the fiscal year ending in 1978. In the fiscal year ending in 1998, there were 140. But because the population of Metro's jurisdiction grew from 350,000 to 928,000 during that period the homicide rate actually went down. In 1978 the rate was 17 per 100,000. The most current rate is 15 per 100,000.