PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia Police Department has seen an increase in applicants this summer. Officials credit a big increase in spending on recruitment ads. It’s an important improvement for a department that has been chronically understaffed.
The department is more than a thousand officers short of budgeted staffing and has been struggling to close the gap, so the response to its latest recruitment campaign is good news. More than 2,100 people applied — almost twice as many as responded to the last two campaigns in December and March.
“This is different because we had a lot of money,” said city human resources director Mike Zaccagni.
City Council approved a million dollars for recruitment, after seeing ads in Philadelphia seeking police officers for Washington, D.C.
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Zaccagni said the money allowed a longer-than-usual six-week campaign across several platforms. “We did social media, some billboards [and] we were really present on SEPTA,” he said.
The campaign targeted Black and Latino candidates, according to Zaccagni. Of those applicants who chose to share their race, there was an increase in people of color from 74% in the March campaign to 80%.
A lot of applicants drop out during the hiring process and it’s not clear yet how many of the applicants will enter the academy. Still, Zaccagni says it’s a positive development for a department that has suffered from staffing shortages since 2020. Enlisting new officers — and filling many city jobs — became a challenge after the pandemic and civil unrest.
Zaccagni says the city will use data and lessons learned from this campaign for other hard-to-fill jobs and for a fall police recruiting campaign.
Council included $3 million in this year’s budget for recruitment efforts.
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