Champaign police hire nine new officers in largest class in recent memory | Courts-police-fire

CHAMPAIGN — Out of the 95 students who graduated from the University of Illinois Police Training Institute last week, a total of nine joined the Champaign Police Department, the largest rookie class the department has seen in recent history.

The new hires help bolster a police force that suffered a severe shortage of sworn staff during the pandemic. While vacancies still remain, Lt. Kurt Buckley said this new large class is a step in the right direction and proves the department’s efforts to attract more candidates have been successful.

“It’s a sign that people want to work at the Champaign Police Department and it’s a team effort to get to where we’re at right now,” Buckley said. “That includes not only our marketing and branding campaign, but word of mouth.”

While Buckley declined to provide the exact amount of current vacancies, he said the department is still not at its full authorized total of 126 officers and is continuing to hire.

The department last reported having 116 sworn staff members in April. That included 23 “unserviceable” officers due to training, injury or active military service — ultimately leaving 10 positions open, an improvement from the 25 vacancies the department reported in 2022.

The surge can be attributed, in part, to the city investing in its recruitment efforts. Campaigns advertised hiring and retention bonuses, and the hiring process was streamlined. The city used to hire just one class of officers a year but now has a rolling hiring process every month.

Still, bringing a new officer on board takes time.

Police Training Institute Director Joe Gallo, who retired as a deputy chief in Champaign in 2018, said the institute is a “busy” 16-week program where students with little to no experience in law enforcement are subject to 640 hours of curriculum designated by the state training board and more than 100 hours of scenario practice.

The 95 who graduated Thursday must now also complete field training at the departments that have hired them. In Champaign, that involves more than 20 additional weeks of training, Buckley said, so “it’s not something that happens overnight.”

Notably, while Champaign’s department and others saw drops in staffing levels in recent years, Gallo said total enrollment in the UI’s basic law-enforcement class dipped slightly from 207 in 2018 to 203 in 2019 and 200 in 2020, then shot up to 258 in 2021 and 316 in 2022, with another small decrease to 294 in 2023.

The August cohort sent officers to 46 different law-enforcement agencies in the state.

Locally, that includes one officer in Urbana, three in Rantoul and three in Danville, as well as one deputy in the Champaign County Sheriff’s Office and two in the Vermilion County Sheriff’s Department.

The class also includes one officer each in Hoopeston, Mahomet, Monticello and Sullivan, and a deputy in the Ford County Sheriff’s Office.

The only other city that took on nine new officers out of this cohort was Peoria. The next-highest was six officers in Joliet.

Buckley added that the incoming cohort and other recent officer hires at the Champaign department have transformed it into a much younger force. He said he and others at the city are “ecstatic” that it has drawn those officers and hopes to build on their efforts.

“As far as having a certain number of officers with under three years on and how that helps out the department — experience is golden, but at the same time, we don’t have the luxury,” Buckley said. “It comes down to hiring the right people, and I feel that we’ve been doing that.”