HASKELL, Ark. — Over the past few years, police departments everywhere have been struggling to recruit officers, with many of them turning to salary raises to encourage more applicants.
Now, the City of Haskell has been having similar budget meetings, as they've worked to rebuild nearly their entire police department.
This comes about two months after nearly the entire Haskell police force walked out of a city hall meeting and quit over funding, equipment, and staffing shortages.
Those demands are things that Police Chief Brad Hicks said the city is delivering on with support.
"We've actually got a raise for the officers, we went from $34,750, a year to $42,200 for entry-level officers. Once we're fully staffed, we'll have actually ten employees, as opposed to the previous eight," Hicks explained.
While those changes came after the walk-out, Police Chief Hicks said it wasn't the motivation for them.
"Well before the incident on January 9th, they were taking everything into consideration. I think it was just a good effort on all parts to come to an agreement," he said.
The chief added that Haskell PD staff is back up to filling five out of the expanded ten police officer slots.
Though they're not the only department that has been heavily working to recruit officers right now. Jonathan Tolentino with Little Rock Police said that recruiting was one of the reasons they recently upped their salaries.
"Recruiting, in general, has been kind of tough for the law enforcement profession. Other departments around us have been raising their salaries and issues. I mean, you have to raise your salary to make a living, you know, and so thankfully, we were able to raise our salary as well," Tolentino added.
He also said that the department has already seen an impact from the higher salaries.
"We have seen some new hires apply, as well. And we've seen a lot of what we call pre-certified officers applying as well," he explained.
He added that the pre-certified officers include officers that have come from other departments.
Meanwhile across the river, North Little Rock Police have also seen a similar increase in interest. NLRPD Recruiter Officer, Joe Green, shared in a statement," We've seen more interest and inquiries from people that are interested in a career with the NLRPD since the salary increase, probably the highest it has been in the past year and a half."
All the while, advertising their own higher salary Chief Hicks said was approved in February, Haskell has been actively working to keep up with bigger cities in recruiting.
"I think the raise will give us a better employee pool than we previously had," he added.
Another concern from the officers that quit in January was the need for new police vehicles, and Chief Hicks said that the department hopes to get new cars by the end of the year.