Law enforcement agencies across South Dakota are struggling to find qualified candidates to serve as police officers, potentially putting the safety of the public and existing officers at risk.
The decline in applicants, experts say, is due to a combination of relatively low pay, high stress and danger on the job, increased training and certification requirements, and general disinterest in policing among college and technical school graduates.
Retention challenges, particularly in rural departments, are being driven by a historically low overall unemployment rate, a lack of opportunities for career advancement, and long workdays and on-call periods.
Nationally, the number of full-time sworn officers fell by 11 percent from 1997 to 2016 as a rate per 1,000 residents, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. Urban departments are seeing the biggest decline in officer applications.
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South Dakota agencies face similar challenges. The Sioux Falls Police Department received 634 applications for open officer jobs in 2010, but only 373 applications during a 12-month period in 2018-19, a 41 percent decline.
Meanwhile, the number of officers in Sioux Falls has not kept up with the population. From 2010 to 2019, the number of officers on duty rose by 13.5 percent while the population rose 21.4 percent.
“Everybody nationwide has challenges in that way, just because of the unique people you’re looking for and because they’re not out there in the numbers we would like,” said Lt. Toby Benson, head of recruitment for the Sioux Falls Police Department.
Officer pay has risen steadily in South Dakota over the past decade, with most agencies paying about $40,000 to $48,000 a year to start with full benefits. The statewide average salary for all jobs is about $41,000.
Larger departments typically have enough officers to handle fluctuations in hiring without great risk. But smaller South Dakota agencies — including 34 sheriff’s offices with four deputies or fewer and 19 cities with only one or two officers — are less able to maintain service levels.
Years ago, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in northwestern South Dakota had nearly two dozen certified law enforcement officers. Now, the force is down to about 10 officers, according to Capt. Joe Brings Plenty of the Cheyenne River tribal law enforcement agency.
At times, that means only two or three officers are on patrol and responding to calls on the reservation of about 4,300 square miles and roughly 18,000 residents.
“If we have events coming up, we can prepare, but if it’s just a shift and something is happening and the officer needs help, that’s a huge safety factor,” Brings Plenty said.
Officers in the small tribal agency, with its headquarters in Eagle Butte, are often on-call to respond while off duty, adding to stress and pressure on officers and making the job less desirable to new recruits.
“Our funding source has shrunk and our population has grown,” Brings Plenty said. “Even though we have a smaller town, we take an enormous number of calls.”
According to the 2018 crime report by the state Attorney General’s Office, staffing surveys show several South Dakota agencies have limited officer counts at any given time.
Avon, Beresford, Kadoka, Kimball, Lake Norden, Menno, Murdo, Platte, Scotland and Tripp have only one officer. Municipal forces with only two officers include Alcester, Clark, Eagle Butte, Jefferson, Faith, Freeman, Parkston, Philip and Tyndall, according to the report.
Finding qualified applicants to fill positions in remote rural areas is difficult and having a single opening on a small force can dramatically affect the safety of the community and the officers themselves.
Jeremy Wellnitz, chief of police in Clark, is one of two full-time officers in the city of about 1,050 people about 30 miles west of Watertown. Even with two officers and a pair of part-time officers who help out on weekends, providing 24-hour police service puts a great burden on Wellnitz and his full-time colleague.
He said it is a challenge to find a qualified applicant willing to move to Clark for a $40,000-a-year salaried position that requires 12 to 14 hours a day on patrol and to be on call almost constantly when not on duty.
The challenge of recruiting a qualified officer will soon become real for Wellnitz as he prepares for the departure of the other full-time officer who will be deployed for about a year with the Army Reserves.
“I could try to hire somebody, but I could only have them for basically a year, and nobody wants to come out to Clark to work for just one year,” he said.
Benson, head of recruiting for Sioux Falls police, said the department, which has 260 officers and is fully staffed at 269, has about 20 employees who visit colleges and technical schools about three times a month to meet with potential candidates. They also attend job fairs to in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
“The younger people now are looking at communities more than they did before. They’re asking, ‘What do you have to offer?’” he said. “They’re looking for a place to live primarily and then they think about work.”
Brendyn Medina, spokesperson for the Rapid City Police Department, said the agency is generally able to hire enough people to compensate for retirements and normal turnover.
“We do a pretty good job on trying to stay on top of our number,” he said. “But over the years, we’ve had to think a little more creatively to try in our recruitment efforts to garner interest in the law enforcement field.”
Recent efforts include more aggressive attempts to attract officer candidates who reflect the diversity of the community, which mostly means trying to recruit women and Native Americans.
In mid-March, the department hosted a recruitment event called Strong{HER} focused on educating potential female candidates about police work and employment opportunities.
Along with the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, the Rapid City Police Department also participates in the Akicita Mentorship Program that pairs working officers with Native American students in the criminal justice program at Western Dakota Tech.
The intent of Akacita — the Lakota word for “soldier” or “warrior” — is to heighten interest in law enforcement among Native Americans while building relationships between police agencies and Rapid City’s largest minority population.
The program has seen some early success, as have efforts to lure more women into policing, said Peter Ragnone, criminal justice program director at WDT.
Women made up about half of the fall 2018 class of new enrollees in criminal justice at the technical school, he said.
Ragnone, who spent about 25 years on the Rapid City police force, said that when he was hired as an officer in 1991 more than 100 people applied for about five openings, a ratio of 20 applicants for one job.
Now, he said, the agency and others in South Dakota typically see about only three applicants for each open officer position.
Unlike other law enforcement agencies in the state, the Pennington County Sheriff's Office (PCSO) says it doesn't struggle to find deputies.
The sheriff's office "is extremely lucky" that it's able to hire people from the county's adult and juvenile jails, said Kim Bloomenrader, PCSO human resources assistant.
The department also recruits candidates by attending job fairs, reaching out to local colleges and "aggressively" using social media, she said. Offering competitive wages and benefit package helps as well.
Bloomenrader said one area where they struggle is in its contract towns, especially the Wall position, since they require a two-year commitment and must live in the area. To help mitigate that issue, she said, PCSO recently added a housing allowance to help the Wall deputy find housing.
It's also more difficult to hire correction officers at the jails, Bloomenrader said.
"Be the employer that people want to work for with a positive culture," she said when asked what advice she has for other agencies struggle to recruit. "Be good to your employees and provide adequate training."
Ragnone said the typical turnover rate among the state’s roughly 1,700 law enforcement officers is about 10 percent per year. The high rate puts great pressure on departments statewide, especially those with larger forces, to fill those 170 positions just to keep up.
Enrollment in the WDT justice program has been steady, with about 50 new students in fall 2018, Ragnone said.
Still, those and others who seek to become certified in law enforcement at colleges and tech schools cannot meet the increasing demand caused by rising population and a growing population of officers reaching retirement age, Ragnone said.
“Our program numbers are good; larger than what we see in recent years, but the demand also has increased, and the demand is more than what our program alone could supply,” he said. “It is definitely what we would call an applicant’s market because of the opportunities.”