Facing vacancies, Modesto raises hiring bonuses for officers to as much as $25,000
Help could be on the way for Modesto’s overworked and understaffed police officers.
The City Council on Tuesday night increased the bonuses Modesto pays officers who join its Police Department and approved a spending plan from its sales tax increase that includes hiring more park rangers and other civilians to allow officers to focus more on their core mission.
The hiring bonus for an officer was $15,000 paid over five years. The bonus now is $20,000 paid over two years. The plan approved by the council includes increasing the bonuses for police officer recruits and trainees from $2,000 to $5,000.
The Police Department also will offer for the first time hiring bonuses of $2,500 for community service officers, animal control officers and police support specialists.
The proposal includes $5,000 bonuses to officers, recruits and trainees who are military veterans with honorable or general discharges. Community service officers, animal control officers and police support specialists would receive $2,000 bonuses for an honorable or general discharge.
So an officer could receive as much as $25,000 for joining the Modesto Police Department.
All employees pay back a prorated portion of their bonus if they don’t stay with the department for five years.
Increasing the number of park rangers from four to eight is part of a spending plan for Measure H, the 1% sales tax voters approved in the November election. The tax increase takes effect April 1.
The city expects the tax increase will generate $10 million from April 1 through June 30, the final quarter of the city’s current 2022-23 budget year.
The spending plan the council approved Tuesday night is for nearly $4.5 million. City officials will return with a plan for the remaining $5.5 million.
More tree trimming
The nearly $4.5 million includes spending across several departments besides the Police Department.
For instance, Public Works is getting more than $1.8 million for such efforts as increased tree trimming and reducing blight. And there is $1.15 million in spending for Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods, including $784,214 for an additional parks maintenance crew. And the spending includes one-time purchases, such as vehicles for the new rangers.
Councilman Chris Ricci thanked staff for developing what he called thoughtful budget recommendations for the $4.5 million. “It’s wonderful to see that we are working to address what people want us to address,” he said.
Besides more park rangers, the Police Department will hire two civilian investigators. One will be assigned to the traffic safety unit and the other to the special investigations unit.
The department also is doubling the number of outreach specialists in its Community Health and Assistance Team from six to 12 and hiring a crime analyst at a cost of $624,059. Measure H is not paying for this. Instead, Stanislaus County is paying for this from what it receives from its state Community Corrections Partnership Plan funding.
Modesto expects to receive $39 million from Measure H during its 2023-24 budget year, which begins July 1, and will develop a spending plan for the money. While Measure H is a general tax, Modesto officials say it will be spent on public safety, parks, city trees, homelessness, blight and other basics.
The Police Department is allocated 210 officers and 104 civilian employees, according to the city budget. (These allocations do not include the positions the council approved Tuesday.) The department has 25 officer and 12.5 civilian vacancies, according to a Jan. 24 department report.
The department has faced challenges in recruiting and keeping officers for about a decade. The city offered its first hiring bonus for officers in 2014. The amount was $5,500.
More officers leaving, retiring
The department has faced the same challenges as other departments across the nation. Fewer people are interested in law enforcement careers and more are leaving. For instance, according to the city, 2,200 people applied to become a Modesto officer in 2015. That number was 557 in 2022.
The department had 16 officers leave in 2021 and 22 in 2022, according to the city. These departures do not include new officers out of the academy who failed to complete their field training. The department also had seven officers retire in 2021 and 10 retire in 2022.
A 2022 survey by the Police Executive Research Forum of 184 law enforcement agencies in 37 states, the District of Columbia and three Canadian provinces showed resignations were up 43% compared with 2021 and retirements were up 24%.
The survey concluded that these trends “were caused largely by the extreme stresses that the COVID-19 pandemic brought to policing in 2020 and 2021, and by the thousands of protests and demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which in many cases involved acts of violence and hostility toward police officers.”
Police Chief Brandon Gillespie has said the $20,000 is in line with what other law enforcement agencies pay and allows Modesto to compete for officers.
According to media reports, the Bay Area city of Antioch increased its bonuses from $10,000 to $30,000 in September; Chico, in Butte County, approved $40,000 bonuses in December; and Whittier, in Southern California, increased its bonuses from $15,000 to $20,000 in September.
As part of increasing the bonuses, the Modesto council increased the Police Department budget for these expenditures from $50,000 to $415,000 annually.
Council members voted 7-0 for the bonuses and for the Measure H spending plan. The bonuses were among several consent items the council approved with one vote.
This story was originally published February 15, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
