Joplin Police Still Reeling From Pay Issues
The City of Joplin has been working to fix the pay issues for the Joplin Police Department. Unfortunately, that process was a long a tedious one that still leaves some questions and left the force with vacancies that need to be filled.
News Talk KZRG spoke with Captain Trevor Duncan of the Joplin Police Department who says that they are making huge progress on hiring, but the biggest factor now is time.
Currently the city is short 31 officers. There are 7 openings for police officer and they are accepting lateral applications until February 1st, and testing for those that don’t have experience or even academy on February 2nd. Their primary goal is to hire from the lateral pool, and will hope to fill the remaining vacancies from the February 2nd test date. Plus, there are 12 current recruits in training at the Joplin Police training facility until May before additional training with a Field Training Officer (FTO), and 5 more future officers will be starting police academy at MSSU this month and will begin their in house training in May.
The FTO training of future officers takes 14 weeks with some of the trainees possibly being accelerated because of previous law enforcement experience.
Making sure that the citizens of Joplin are protected is the primary goal of the Joplin Police Department, but it takes a lot of time to get all of these officers out on the streets and properly trained.