The NOPD has seen a surge of applicants recently. The catch: the department isn't hiring many of them.
"There were 25 new officers hired last year out of 2,590 applicants," Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, told members of the New Orleans City Council during their special meeting Wednesday to discuss the city's crime problem. "You're looking at one to one-and-a-half percent of applicants being hired.
Asher says while the number of hires seems low, the number of applicants is more disturbing. According to Asher, the NOPD actually needs nearly double the applications to keep up with the number of officers leaving the force.
"You can see since the budget's been passed at the end of November/early December, there has been an increase, but even at this increased level, if we were to sustain it for a full year, we likely would not match seven-percent attrition," Asher said. "Really anywhere short of 5,000 applicants means that you're not able to match what has traditionally been, historically, nine-percent attrition, which we can expect."
Asher noted that the department has seen a reduction in officers leaving the force thanks to the retention bonuses approved by city leaders. However, he said a mass exodus is possible this spring once those bonuses are paid.
"I think one of our key question is: What's going to happen in March when the retention bonuses are paid and officers who are thinking about leaving before don't have that retention bonus right in front of them any more."
All of this comes as the NOPD suffers from its worst staffing shortage in years. As of Sunday, the NOPD has 929 officers. That down from 1,526 in January 2010, 1,229 in June 2019, and 1,085 in January 2022.
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