Police department recruitment, retention subject of budget review

LACONIA — A new department pay scale could help to alleviate recruitment and retention challenges for the Laconia Police Department, councilors learned at a budget hearing Monday night.

The department is one of only a few statewide to have achieved one of the highest levels of accreditation.

Recruiting qualified officers and retaining them has proven a behemoth task. The department is down eight officers at present. There could be as many as 49 officers employed by the department at full-strength — four of those positions are funded by grants and other means and have never been filled. 

An additional 12 officers are immediately eligible for retirement, Chief Matt Canfield told councilors at the hearing.

“We have six patrol officer vacancies and two detective position officers, accounting for eight vacancies at the moment,” he said. “Another concern that is certainly on our forefront is the number of senior officers and senior command staff that are eligible for immediate retirement. Right now we have nine supervisory personnel that are eligible, six officers and two civilians.”

Several factors contribute to recruitment at the department, which extend further than pay and benefits. While compensation is not competitive enough, a national climate strongly critical of law enforcement, particularly after the deaths of George Floyd in Minnesota, and Tyre Nichols in Tennessee, has contributed to a lack of enthusiasm among potential police officers to join their ranks.

“As you all are well aware ... that was one of our biggest challenges this past year. We haven’t really seen this hit in Laconia up until this past year. We have seen it, probably over the last five years, across our state and across our country,” Canfield said. “Last year it hit us pretty hard — a lot of the causes for that was the George Floyd incident that we saw as well as the Tyre Nichols incident in Memphis, Tennessee, which caused a national political climate, the anti-police movement.”

Canfield said the fallout from those incidents created an environment where potential officers were apprehensive to get into the profession for fear of intense criticism or unfair judgements. Coupled with higher training and background requirements, it is difficult for police departments to find qualified candidates.

“Part of that was the proliferation of body cameras, the Monday-morning quarterbacking, the fact that not necessarily every officer wants to do this job because they’re going to be critiqued on a split-second decision,” he said, “coupled with a strong economy and then requirements and expectations of today’s modern police officer. These requirements have changed dramatically over the course of my career.”

But Canfield is taking a proactive approach to filling open positions. The department has a recruitment team of five officers who attend events throughout the region in addition to written and physical testing sessions. That team attended 16 recruitment events in 2023 alone, many of them occurring at colleges and universities. 

“We’ve done a lot,” he said. 

In addition to increased recruitment, a raise on the pay scale, effective July 1, could help to increase morale and entice potential recruits. The previous pay scale ranged from $51,625 and $76,710 and will increase to between $53,164 and $79,019. The department is also advertising a $2,500 sign-on bonus. 

“The employee pay rate was significantly below market-rate, which was very inhibitive to our recruitment and retention of police officers here in Laconia. It also definitely affected employee morale,” Canfield said. “As you know, on July 1, the pay scale will be adjusted. I thank all of [city council] for recognizing the significance of this problem, and that this was something that needed to happen to save our good-quality police officers.”

Canfield said the pay scale increase improved morale among officers immediately.

“When this news broke, it was monumental,” he said. “The feeling and the lift to morale was incredible — you could feel it — so it’s very significant and I haven’t heard anyone talk about leaving since then.”

Despite challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified officers, Canfield told councilors the city has one of only a few departments statewide which hold the highest level of law enforcement certification available.

The department has maintained good standing with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies and is one of just a handful of departments throughout the Granite State to have done so.

“It is, by far, the premier credential association for police agencies across the country, and actually internationally,” Canfield said. “It’s 483 standards ... Approximately 1,000 agencies out of 17,000 police agencies across the country are CALEA accredited, so it’s not that many. Here in New Hampshire, 15 police agencies are accredited out of over 200 law enforcement agencies.”

Accreditation requires ongoing self-assessment consisting of an annual remote compliance service review, a quadrennial onsite review and a quadrennial review for the commission for final determination. The third year in the cycle was 2023. CALEA reviewed 213 standards and verified the Laconia Police Department is in compliance.

This year, the department will go through re-accreditation. A comprehensive, onsite review of its operations will take place Aug. 5-8. The process will continue through November, when the department could earn its accreditation once again.

"I think that's pretty darn impressive, quite frankly," Mayor Andrew Hosmer said.