The Challenge Of Finding The Next Kirkwood Officer

Kirkwood, Missouri -- Friday, April 27, 2007 –Jack Plummer addresses challenges every day as Chief of Police for Kirkwood. One of the hardest and ongoing is finding good recruits to fill vacancies within his department. When two more officers left last month, they took a combined 55 years of experience with the city with them. Filling those shoes will be hard. Making his job harder is the fact that Kirkwood has the lowest starting pay for police officers in the area (compared to other cities including Glendale, Webster Groves, Clayton, Creve Coeur, University City, Olivette, Brentwood, Richmond Heights, and Maryland Heights). On average, it’s a difference of about $3,9xx.

“Years ago, we used to get a large applicant pool,” Chief Plummer recounts. “Today, we’ve had several interview processes that didn’t give us any good candidates to choose from.” Chief Plummer also notes that Kirkwood does not pay for candidates to attend the St. Louis County Police Academy. “We’d love to, we just can’t afford to,” Chief Plummer stated. The result? Other departments get first crack at the area’s top recruits.

            All that may change after June 5. The city has placed a proposition on the June ballot which would increase salaries for police officers, firefighters, emergency personnel, and other city staff so that the city can compete for quality employees as well as retain the experienced staff it currently has. “Proposition C would raise salaries for our public safety employees and other personnel to the 60^th percentile,” commented Claire Budd, the city’s public information officer. “It wouldn’t put us out in front of the pack, but it would allow our departments to be competitive again for quality staff.” Currently, there are several positions that pay at the 20^th percentile within the city. Proposition C would also allow Chief Plummer to hire back four officers, whose posts have been left vacant in recent years due to funding shortfalls within the city. The fire department would be able to hire back three firefighter/paramedic positions as well, which would allow the city to operate its second ambulance 100% of the time.

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