La. leaders are working on new incentive fund to help recruit more police

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - House Speaker Clay Schexnayder says that finding quality new police officers to join the force has become a struggle like many other industries. And one of the biggest reasons we have the problem is money.

“We looked at other states to see who had a model that was recruiting the best, Florida absolutely did, we kinda molded that model to fit us and that’s the bill you saw today,” said the Speaker on Monday afternoon after the Senate Finance committee voted unanimously to support it.

His plan is to set aside $5 million for the state to use in offering $5,000 to each new recruit. And apparently, the money has already been worked into the state’s budget for next year.

“The Sheriff’s Association, the Police Chief’s Association, State Police, everybody’s been on board so I think this will be a positive thing for us,” the Speaker added.

To be eligible, each person cannot have worked in Louisiana as a law enforcement officer before, must start their career on or after July of this year and must be employed full-time for at least two full years. Sgt. L’Jean Mckneely with BRPD says every law enforcement agency in the country is struggling to hire more cops and says although BRPD has a budget to offer signing bonuses of their own, there are others who can barely afford uniforms. And some extra money for hiring purposes could only help.

“I’d say the number of applicants that we are getting are less but we’re still filling the seats within our academy. It puts us in a place where we can become competitive with the other industries that are here in the South Baton Rouge, South Louisiana area”

Lawmakers have until June 8 to get everything they can to the governor, so they’ll be working around the clock to get what they can do, possibly working through the weekend.

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