Police officers in Dallas could receive a $1,000 bonus for recruiting new officers into the department.
The pilot program, which starts on Oct. 1 as part of the fiscal year 2025 budget, is intended to help with officer retention and recruitment as the Dallas Police Department works to increase the number of sworn officers.
Dallas Police Assistant Director Martin Riojas told the Dallas City Council during a briefing Wednesday the incentive program would allow 100 officers to receive a $1,000 bonus for applicants who successfully join the force.
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia said that the department has just under 3,100 sworn officers but plans to graduate 250 new officers from its academy each of the next two years to reach 3,600 sworn officers by 2033.
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The department is expected to lose 190 officers through attrition, a combination of retirements and officers leaving the department. They are also likely to lose 37 officers to retirement and another 83 officers with five years of less service time with the department. Garcia told the council it is difficult to get a sense of why those officers are leaving because there is no requirement for employees to list a reason upon exiting.
Garcia said the department is working hard on retention strategies to slow officer departures. This trend intensified after 2016 with the financial problems of the Dallas Police and Fire Pension system.
The council budget briefing covered the use of overtime within the police department, which exceeded its projected budget by $11 million this year.
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The police department projects it'll need $55.5 million for overtime in 2025, close to the $55.6 million spent in 2024. The presentation to the council showed the $55.6 million cost is for 732,000 overtime hours. To cover the same number of hours with regular time hours, the department would need to hire 451 additional officers at a cost of $113 million.
"I think the importance is to make sure that we’re utilizing it (overtime) judiciously, that we’re responsible with it," Garcia said.
The department is also developing a trio of retention programs to reduce the number of officers who leave every year. Garcia said those retention strategies include expanding the 4-day, 10-hour-per-day workweek across the department. Currently, two substations use the schedule that Garcia said was initially started to improve morale but has since shown results in lowering overtime utilization.
Additionally, the department will allow officers to sell back their unpaid sick time along with the new $1,000 officer referral program.
Garcia said programs that target new officer recruitment help only with recruitment.
"Retention incentives help both," Garcia said about recruitment and retention benefits.
The Dallas City Council Public Safety Committee recently approved a similar plan to pay Dallas police officers $6,000 to recruit an officer through the academy.
Dallas Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said in response to a question about the different approaches that the city would begin with the $100,000 commitment for the pilot program and assess its effectiveness before expanding it.
