Lt. Virgil Litterell with the Tulsa Police Academy talks about training recruits to become police officers through various hands on scenarios.
The market's recovery from the pandemic downturn has made for an especially celebratory exit for many recent police retirees, but their departure leaves a question: Who will fill their shoes?
The situation isn’t unique to TPD. Police departments across the country are struggling to reconcile high retirement rates with decreased retention and recruitment on the heels of a year that was particularly unkind to officer morale.
Recent research from the Police Executive Research Forum on nearly 200 law enforcement agencies showed the rate of retirements at some departments rose 45% compared with the previous year. At the same time, hiring slowed by 5%, according to the study provided to The Associated Press.
Twenty years ago, about three officers left the Tulsa Police Department every month, Matt Kirkland, the agency’s director of planning, policy and quality control, told city councilors during a recent committee meeting. This year, 27 have been lost to date via retirements and 18 through resignations.
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That’s an average of nearly eight per month, and running three overlapping police academies of about 20 recruits each year still leaves the department at a net loss of about six positions each month, Capt. Richard Meulenberg said.
“We are probably in the biggest crunch of personnel that I can remember,” said Meulenberg, who has been with the department longer than two decades. “Every single day, we offer officers overtime to come in and work where we have manpower shortages.”
It’s impossible to point a finger at any sole cause, but it’s easy to identify possible contributing factors, Tulsa police officials said. The uncertainty and working conditions of the pandemic coupled with negative rhetoric and civil unrest amid a national reckoning on policing was sure to cause some already on their way out to consider pulling the plug early.
However, the timing has coincided with a combination of limited-time only financial incentives available through the state. Gov. Kevin Stitt in May last year approved the first increase to state retirement benefits in 12 years.
The uphill recovery of the investment market has also sent rates of return within the state’s police pension system soaring to the highest they’ve been in at least a decade.
The phones have been ringing off the hook at the Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System as word gets around, so much so the executive director has been helping to answer them.
Ginger Sigler said police officers in Oklahoma are eligible for retirement at 20 years of service, when they can receive 50% of their income in the form of a pension, and at 30 years, with a 75% pension.
Instead of drawing their pension after 30 years, longtime officers can funnel it toward an investment account for up to five years. The deferred retirement option plan functions almost as a replacement for Social Security benefits, Sigler said, which police officers don't contribute to or benefit from unless they work a different job that does so. Even then, their benefits are heavily penalized because of their police pension.
The investment account has a baseline return rate of 7.5%, but in the market upturn, investors are making in the mid-twenties, Sigler said. So far, the rate topped out in April at 26.67%, and, to officials’ surprise, May closely followed at 26.5%.
The cost-of-living adjustment was just the icing on the cake. Benefits increased by 2% if a person was retired for between two and five years as of July 1, 2020, and by 4% if the person was retired for five or more years as of July 1, 2020.
Sigler called the timing a wonderful coincidence for those already thinking of heading out the door.
“The guys that were pretty close to retiring anyway, they all pulled the trigger so they could get these big market rate returns,” Sigler said. “We’re just excited for them. This is just one little thing we can do to thank them for what they do for us.”
Big shoes to fill, fewer feet
Twenty years ago, hundreds of people were vying for a spot in the Tulsa Police academy. Now, administrators consider themselves “lucky” if a dozen make it there, Meulenberg said.
The department has funding for 90 new officers every year, and it's typically divided into three 30-person academies that run a little longer than six months. There's always attrition within the academy if cadets are deemed unfit for service, so classes typically graduate less than 30. Their strength sometimes wanes even more if graduates fail out during the four additional months of field training.
The department's latest class, scheduled to begin in January, drew 43 applicants, Kirkland reported. Thirty-four "washed out" during the application process due to their results on the psychological exam or criminal and credit history reports, leaving 11 candidates for the class of 30. Only nine made it past the chief's review.
When Jeff Downs, president of the Tulsa Fraternal Order of Police, was hired from a smaller department 26 years ago, he said TPD was then viewed as the "premier law enforcement agency" in Oklahoma and prided itself on being the highest-paid, highest-trained and highest-educated department in the state.
The agency's training standards still easily eclipse the state's bare-minimum, Meulenberg said, and the department remains among the 1% of agencies in the nation that require a bachelor’s degree. Administrators have acknowledged the degree requirement likely bars otherwise qualified candidates from applying, but Meulenberg said studies have shown that officers who completed higher education use less force and draw fewer complaints overall than those without a degree.
Downs said the lack of applicants is not due to training standards or educational requirements.
“It comes down to one thing," he said. "And that’s money."
TPD's max officer pay of $73,591.44 ranks at least fourth behind those of nearby agencies in Sand Springs, Bixby and Broken Arrow, which pay an average of $7,000 more, according to a survey provided by the city.
The Broken Arrow Police Department requires less than a bachelor's degree and will see a 6% raise across-the-board beginning in July, setting its maximum officer pay more than $20,000 higher than that of Tulsa.
When compared nationally to other big-ticket departments in states like Colorado, Texas and Missouri, and adjusted for cost-of-living, Tulsa pays below-average starting pay, but barely above-average maximum pay, the city's survey shows.
Statewide, Tulsa Police Department is the second-largest municipal agency but has the eighth-highest pay, Downs said.
He believes that's what could be influencing younger officers to seek out jobs in the private sector — where they make more and risk their personal safety less — and discouraging law enforcement-hopefuls from choosing TPD.
