The Colony has taken a page from Hollywood to entice recruits to join its police force.
A new series of trailers crafted by a video production company owned by a former police officer from The Colony is showing online and at Galaxy Theatres. It was paid for using the funds seized during drug busts.
The video spots hope to drum up interest among viewers in joining the Colony Police Department, which, like many other agencies in the country, needs more officers.
They star current police officers and feature everything from puppies to drones.
“Chasing cars and chasing people and being on the SWAT team — that’s a small percentage of what we do on a daily basis,” Matthew Winnett, assistant chief of The Colony Police Department, told CBS News Texas. “Most of what we do really revolves around serving the community and responding to people’s needs.”
He added that the city’s recent growth has resulted in a pressing need for more law enforcement personnel. However, that does not mean The Colony has lost its small-town appeal.
“We’re still small enough where we have that family atmosphere, but we’re big enough where there’s opportunities, there’s different divisions, and there’s a lot going on, a lot of exciting things,” Winnett said, per CBS.
While there are several requirements for future police officers, from passing a physical fitness test to possessing no misdemeanor (class A) or felony convictions, The Colony Police Department offers various perks, such as a $10,000 lateral transfer bonus, every other weekend off, and 14 paid holidays per year.
As Winnett explained, recruitment efforts at The Colony have been hindered by competition from other agencies in the region and a pervasive reluctance of jobseekers to turn to law enforcement.
“There’s just less people that want to be in law enforcement,” he told CBS. “There’s been some incidents in the past years that have kind of given law enforcement a bad reputation, incidents across the nation.”
The Dallas Police Department has also struggled with officer recruitment and retention. Just last month, Dominique Artis, the City of Dallas’ chief of public safety, and DPD Chief Eddie Garcia revised the policy on tattoos and personal grooming, as previously covered by The Dallas Express. DPD officers can now wear groomed beards and show some approved body art, such as tattoos.
Artis noted that other police and fire departments across Texas had similar rules in place, and he hoped the move would improve morale and recruitment and retention efforts.
This endeavor joins others seen at DPD as of late, such as creating a Wellness Unit dedicated to providing support for personnel and their families. The psychological toll of working as a police officer has driven suicide rates within the profession.
However, it remains to be seen whether DPD has the budget required to shore up its numbers.
DPD currently fields only around 3,000 officers. A previous analysis by the City recommended that a jurisdiction with the population of Dallas be policed by a force of closer to 4,000. At the same time, City leaders only budgeted $645 million for the department this fiscal year. This is considerably less than the allocations of taxpayer money to policing in other high-crime municipalities.