INDIANAPOLIS — In an example of creative marketing, IMPD joined forces with the Indianapolis Colts to hold a recruiting event at the police training academy on Indianapolis’ eastside Tuesday night.
Colts Center Ryan Kelly visited the academy to view IMPD’s physical readiness center.
Ironically, police chiefs across Indiana tell FOX59/CBS4 that a lack of physical fitness is one of the major reasons applicants drop out on their way to becoming police officers.
”We see a number of our applicants wash in the physical agility,” said Greenwood Police Chief James Ison. “They’re just unprepared to meet the physical fitness requirements or the backgrounds. The backgrounds by far get the most of them with criminal histories. For instance, I’ve had applicants apply with multiple felonies.”
Ison said in the last GPD recruit class process, he viewed more than one hundred applications in order to land a handful of recruits.
”This last hiring process that we held in 2024, we had 122 pre-apps submitted. Out of that we got six viable applicants out of 122.”
It’s a lament shared by police chiefs and mayors all across Indiana.
”I have the police chief or the sheriff tell me they have a hundred people applying for five positions,” said Tim Horty, Executive Director of the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy. “Half of them don’t show for the interview or the fitness testing. Half don’t pass the background investigation. Another half don’t pass the drug screening. Another half don’t pass the psychological screening and then they’ve got three people left for five positions.”
Horty said 600 police agencies across the state have ten or fewer officers putting small-town and rural police protection at risk when even one position goes unfilled.
”I think that we’re almost at a crisis stage here in our state because we can’t collectively find good quality officers to become police officers and serve in our communities.”
The International Association of Police Chiefs published a survey Monday that determined that law enforcement agencies in the Midwest lead the nation in staff shortages.
Regionally, cities comparable to Indianapolis, such as Milwaukee and Columbus, Ohio, show decreases in staffing between 16% and 4.5% over the last six years while Nashville is 153 officers below its authorized strength.
The shortage is acute in Indianapolis where IMPD Chief Chris Bailey has just 1455 officers he can call on, the smallest workforce since the merger of IPD and the Marion County Sheriffs Department nearly 20 years ago.
”We’re a department that is 300 officers down,” said Bailey.
The IACP report recommends departments engage in innovative recruiting strategies such as relaxing some non-essential qualifications.
”I think we have to adapt and make sure that we are measuring what it is that makes a good police officer,” said Horty. “Does running a mile-and-a-half make a good police officer? Or do we have an obstacle course that is more indicative of what a police officer might be?”
Horty touts the recent $100 million renovation of the ILEA campus in Plainfield with its addition of a scenario village, improved police driving track and physical fitness facilities as well as e-learning capabilities as the type of enhancements needed to train a new generation of officers.
”I think we need to do a better job of recruiting these youngsters, not just in high school and college job fairs but we need to get into them in middle schools and grade schools,” he said. ”Our research shows about 25% of the young men and women who come here within three years have either left the profession or left their agency.”
Ison said Greenwood PD has barely been treading water the last several years as the number of new recruits barely outpaces the departures of veteran officers.
”The majority of our officers over the last three years, we’ve had ten retire. They have gone to second careers,” he said. ”We’ve had a turnover rate from mass retirements and people leaving to go to other agencies, some of our new hires just not making it through the process, we’ve actually hired 49 officers over the past three years and we’ve lost 42, so, we have a net of about seven officers.
”It has been historically over the past few years one step forward two steps back type of thing. I think we’re coming out of it, though. I think we’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”