Greensburg changes civil service hiring rule, hopes for increased pool of police candidates

The shrinking pool of police officer candidates available to a city such as Greensburg compelled leaders to tweak the hiring timeline.

“There used to be 120 or 140 people that applied to take the (civil service) test,” said Ken Bacha, a member of the city’s civil service commission. “They filled up the cafeteria of the high school. Now, you get a handful of applicants.”

It’s a trend that has become a concern in the law enforcement community in Pennsylvania and throughout the nation.

According to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office, Pennsylvania has the second most state and local law enforcement agencies in the nation — nearly 1,000, but it’s facing a shortage of more than 1,200 municipal police officers. The Pennsylvania State Police currently is attracting 1,000 applicants per class, down from nearly 10,000 per class 30 years ago.

Pennsylvania’s recently approved 2023-24 budget includes $16.4 million in new funding for four state police cadet classes that would bring on board 384 new troopers.

It can take between six months and a year for a prospective municipal police officer to complete requirements of the civil service hiring process.

In Greensburg, candidates now will be able to get a jump on that process by applying for a possible spot on the force before they’ve completed police academy training.

“Hopefully, that increases the number of applicants,” Greensburg police Chief Charles Irvin said.

Greensburg Council this week agreed to change the city’s civil service rules to allow that early entry into the police candidate screening process. Applicants still must have successfully completed academy training when they are hired.

The newly modified rule “allows for current cadets in the academy to at least apply and start the process,” Irvin said. “It’s a long process.

“There’s a written test, there’s a physical agility test, there’s an oral examination, a background investigation and psychological and medical (assessments). By the time you get all those applicants through that process, it can take anywhere from six months to a year.”

The rule change was recommended by the city’s three-member civil service commission.

Bacha noted that once a group of police candidates completes civil service testing, they remain eligible for hiring by the city for up to a year — a time limit that may be extended for an additional year.

Otherwise, he said, “You’re going back through the whole process every year.”

The new civil service rule, Bacha said, is one way the city can “try to minimize the gap between when they have a vacancy and when they can hire.”

Bacha believes increasing time requirements for completing municipal academy training and increasingly negative views about police in general are factors that may be keeping more people from pursuing a law enforcement career.

“The law enforcement community has taken a bad rap,” he said. “It’s a tough, dangerous job.”

Cadet class sizes have been fluctuating from year to year at the Westmoreland County Community College municipal police academy, according to Franklin Newill III, the college’s director of law enforcement programs.

He said enrollment in the academy “had been on a downward trend, but it’s starting to rise again. It’s kind of cyclical. We’ll have 10 in the academy one year and then 2o the next year.”

As it looks to accept police applicants who are still enrolled in the academy, Greensburg is joining a growing trend, Newill said.

“It’s a common practice nowadays,” he said, noting police in Moon Township and at Indiana University of Pennsylvania are among departments that have tapped WCCC cadets for jobs before they graduated.

A former Greensburg police officer who retired from the city force in 2015, Newill said he experienced a long wait when he was hired by the department in 1994.

“When I graduated from the academy, the first (civil service) test I took was at Greensburg in October,” he said. “I didn’t get hired until the following September.”

Recording system replaced

Council agreed to purchase a voice and radio retrieval and playback system for the police department, replacing a outdated system at the station. Interaction Insight Corp. is providing the new system at a cost of $19,751.

Parts are no longer available for the current system, Irvin said.