GREEN BAY (NBC26) — The Green Bay Police and Fire Commission approves a change in how officers are recruited. The new plan requires less college credits and no in-person interview. More than a dozen positions are open.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story with additional details for the web.)
The Green Bay Police Department is changing the way they hire officers. I’m your Green Bay neighborhood reporter Pari Apostolakos. I was at the meeting Tuesday where the city’s Police and Fire Commission approved a new hiring plan. It includes lowering the required number of college credits for people who apply and doing away with in-person interviews.
Take a look inside the meeting where the hiring changes were approved and hear from the people who made it happen in the video below:
Green Bay Police will now review applications and schedule interviews once a week instead of once a quarter and they will replace their current report writing test with a written exam made by the same company the fire department uses.
The city's police and fire commission had concerns about dropping a college credit requirement from 60 to 40.
"Are we willing to drop our standards that much?" Commissioner John Laux said, attending the meeting over Zoom.
Having candidates record video answers to written questions instead of an in-person interview gave some members of the commission pause.
"My first reaction was, gee, not having a face-to-face interview is a big difference," Commission President Rod Goldhahn said. "But then I thought, well, through COVID we hired everybody through online interviews."
When the commission heard new recruits would get 20 college credits after completing the police academy (meeting the state requirement of fulfilling 60 college credits within the first five years of employment) and candidates can be called in for follow-up interviews in person they unanimously approved the new recruiting plan.
"The police department does a tremendous job in their background investigations on these candidates," Goldhahn said. "All that change meant is who's able to turn in an application."
Applicants must be at least 18 years old and new hires make just over $33 an hour. Right now, 16 patrol officer positions are open and seven people are expected to retire within a year.
"That's being felt by all our employees," Acting Commander of the Professional Standards Division Matt Cain said. "The patrol volume hasn't decreased, but there's less people working."
Cain said the lack of staff has more officers working overtime hours. He said in the past, it has taken about six months to hire a new officer after they turn in an application. With the new system, they expect to slash that time in half.
The department expects this new new recruiting process will get more applicants through the door faster and they will start using it next month. The department and the commission must finalize the questions for the new video interview and writing test before they can roll it out for candidates.
