NCJ Number
210398
Journal
Police Chief Volume: 72 Issue: 6 Dated: June 2005 Pages: 16-18,20
Date Published
June 2005
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article presents a description of the Sacramento Police Department’s Community Recruiter program.
Abstract
Police departments across the country have been striving, mostly in vain, to create police agencies with ethnic compositions similar to the communities they serve. This goal has been difficult to achieve through the usual means of recruitment, such as advertisements and booths at community fairs. The Sacramento Police Department took an innovative approach to community recruitment efforts by developing the Community Recruiter Program, which trains community leaders on how to be police recruiters. The program was needed to inform community members of the requirements of police recruits so that community applicants would be better prepared to succeed through the recruitment process. The 3-hour orientation meeting for community leaders covers aspects of recruit testing, the background check process, and reviews the police academy training. Another aspect of the Community Recruiter Program involves the sponsorship of community police recruits as a way of demonstrating community support. Once community recruits become officers they are quickly assigned to duties in their home communities to further reinforce community participation. Thus far, Sacramento’s Community Recruiter Program has met with success, with 58 community leaders trained as police recruiters.