It’s police recruiting season, but filling vacancies is a struggle across Maryland

By Henry J. Brown

Maryland has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, which is usually considered a bright spot for the state’s economy. But for businesses and government agencies looking for workers, Maryland’s low unemployment is a problem that creates labor shortages.

One of the hardest hit industries is law enforcement.

As police recruiting season begins — it typically runs from April to June — police departments across the state are recruiting more aggressively than ever to fill patrol cars, with many offering higher salaries and higher signing bonuses.

“There are many professions that are suffering from labor shortages and skills shortages,” said Anirban Basu, managing director of Sage Policy Group, an economic consulting firm in Baltimore. “However, these groups are most visible among public safety officers and particularly police officers.”

“There are so many other professions actively recruiting right now that it is obviously difficult for departments to hire sufficient numbers of officers,” Basu said.

The shortage of police officers is most serious in the city and county of Baltimore.

“We’re so small now that we can’t be everything to everybody,” which means police departments are diverting officers from paperwork and assigning them to more pressing tasks, said Dave Rose, president of the Baltimore County Fraternal Order of Police. Lodge 4.

There are currently 235 vacancies in the department, out of a total of 1,950 sworn employees.

“If you’ve ever seen an Orioles game, we have signs everywhere saying, ‘Baltimore County is hiring,’” he said.

Baltimore City, Maryland’s largest municipality, is short nearly 600 officers, down from a planned 3,100. To fill vacancies, the city raised its starting salary to $61,349 last July, but the agency says it still has a long way to go.

Smaller cities like Ocean City have struggled to compete with larger agencies for applicants. The seaside resort town announced earlier this year that it would end its summer hiring program due to a sharp decline in applicants and instead seek to hire more full-time officers.

A press release on the agency’s website stated: “In the past, the law enforcement profession was highly competitive, with few openings. As interest in law enforcement has waned, most agencies now compete with each other to fill their positions with a smaller pool of applicants.”

Many states, not just Maryland, face similar recruiting problems.

The job is dangerous, and law enforcement’s image has been tarnished in recent years by high-profile cases of excessive force across the country, in some cases resulting in officers being prosecuted.

“It’s a difficult moment in history to be a police officer,” Basu said.

But Maryland has some unique problems. The biggest is pay, which hasn’t kept pace with the state’s high cost of living: Maryland home prices, for example, have risen more than 50% over the past decade, averaging $473,442 in March, according to the Maryland Association of Realtors.

Police officers’ salaries have also increased, but union leaders and some politicians argue that they are still not comparable to other public service jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the median salary for police officers in Maryland in 2023 was about $76,000, slightly above the national average of $74,910. Education administrators, however, earned only $125,720 on average that year.

The high cost of housing has caused a growing number of workers to leave the state for less expensive areas. This exodus includes many people who would have been interested in working for the police.

“If there are better labor markets or lower living costs in the South, why not pursue that?” asks Basu.

Bowie Police Chief Dwayne Preston, in white shirt, with several officers during a mock confrontation with students at Benjamin Tasker Middle School. Photo by Henry J. Brown/Capital News Service.

Recruitment has also been hurt by rising anti-police sentiment following several high-profile police shootings across the country that sparked protests and accusations of excessive force, including the 2015 death of Freddie Gray Jr., a 25-year-old African-American man who suffered fatal injuries in Baltimore police custody after being arrested for knife possession.

Some police officers believe the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump also deterred some potential police recruits.

“On Jan. 6, officers were put in a situation where their lives were on the line. I think that was an eye-opener for a lot of our candidates who were interested and then dropped out,” said Lt. Sean Schwartz, a recruiting strategist for Bowie Police. The department is currently eight officers short of the minimum number of 67 officers.

“We are all actively involved in talking to people … and telling them the good things about the police,” Schwartz said.

Bowie City Councilman Michael Estéve has spent several years trying to increase police salaries and benefits. Starting salaries aren’t as high as he would like, but he says officers who stay on the job will do well in the long run.

“The benefits grow, so if you stay in the job for 25, 35 years, you can retire quite comfortably,” he said.

Bowie currently offers a starting salary of $59,020, with signing bonuses of $15,000 to $20,000 depending on the officer’s experience. But Bowie Police Chief Dwayne Preston is still looking for new recruits.

“I did a lot of talk shows, I did a lot of advertising on social media, we changed the incentives and increased the signing bonuses with the support of the City Council and the City Manager to make us competitive,” he said.

The department is also participating in career fairs and looking for new ways to connect with younger members of the community, which it hopes will help with future recruitment.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a dozen Bowie police officers competed against the Benjamin Tasker Middle School basketball team in a friendly game. Although the advantage was with the students, the mission succeeded in helping the officers interact with the students in a positive atmosphere.

“We’re very busy with the many community events we do in the spring and summer, but those are the things that give us the most satisfaction,” Preston said. “It’s one of the things that allows us to serve this community in a way that they feel appreciated.”

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