CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Department of Public Safety has focused its attention on recruiting candidates for the city's Division of Police.
"Our major focus is hiring for police," Cleveland Public Safety Director Karrie Howard said.
The Cleveland Public Safety Recruitment Team focuses on attracting new candidates for police, fire, EMS, animal care control, and emergency dispatcher openings. The eight-member team organized an expedited hiring event for the police department on Dec. 15, 16, and 17.
The event comes as just nine officers graduated from the police academy's latest class last week, even less than the 11 who graduated back in August.
"You can take most of the steps and get those done and walk out of here with a preconditional offer of employment to the Cleveland Division of Police," Howard told 3News.
Watch Thursday's graduation ceremony below:
But despite the low numbers, Howard described to us the quality of the most recent class, as opposed to the quantity.
"Those nine people are going to be worth, I don't know, 27 lackluster," he said. "We have nine quality superstars that graduated the academy."
Howard also states the city has solved an issue that led to many officers leaving the department, which was money. New hires can earn up to a $5,000 signing bonus just by joining the Division of Police.
"There's societal obstacles," Howard said when asked what challenges the city faces in hiring new candidates.
Meanwhile, the city is still down a significant number of officers. WKYC reached out to the Division of Police for crime statistics and the specific number of openings within the department, but has not received that information. However, officials did claim back in October that new applications from potential officers were up 45% since August.