Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Police Recruitment topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee reviews LAPD hiring dashboard; staff report large drop-off at polygraph and medical steps
Summary
Department of Personnel demonstrated a new dashboard tracking LAPD hiring; the panel showed thousands of applications but a steep attrition rate at polygraph and medical steps and average time-to-hire measured in months, prompting the committee to request further reporting and periodic updates.
City personnel staff demonstrated a new, nightly-updated dashboard that shows the Los Angeles Police Department's hiring pipeline, including applications, candidates advancing through steps and separations.
The dashboard covers applications submitted since July 1, 2022, and staff presented several figures during the meeting: the panel showed 9,489 total applications for the fiscal period reported; 4,293 candidates advanced to the first assessment step shown on the dashboard; and staff reported 1,147 hires in the fiscal year indicated. The presentation also showed 1,549 total sworn separations since the chart's start date, of which 263 were sworn police separations highlighted in the hiring/separation data.
Personnel staff said the greatest candidate attrition occurs at the polygraph and medical steps. Presenters noted that more than 6,600 medical appointments were scheduled in the reviewed period and that there were 167 cancellations or no-shows for medical appointments. Staff said that earlier process changes have reduced some waits, but that the polygraph and medical steps remain bottlenecks in converting applicants into sworn hires.
The dashboard includes time-to-complete distributions; staff showed examples such as cohorts completing certain stages in roughly 50, 100 and 150 days, and also noted an overall average time-to-hire on the order of about 300 days in the materials. Presenters said the panel allows comparison with other agencies and geographic visualizations showing candidate ZIP codes, education levels and military experience.
Committee members and personnel staff discussed strategies to reduce cancellations and to focus resources on applicants likely to complete the process. Personnel staff described outreach, preparation resources and candidate-preparation volunteers and said exit interviews and surveys are being used to learn why some recruits leave the process.
The committee asked that the Department of Personnel bring the dashboard back to committee for periodic updates and to make the panel available to the council; staff said the dashboard is intended to be updated nightly and to support target-setting for steps such as background investigations and medical scheduling.
Presenters cautioned that some metrics can change as offers have been made for upcoming classes and that certain numbers in the dashboard include candidates who have received offers but have not yet started training. The committee voted to request further reporting and to return the dashboard to committee as a regular item for monitoring.
The presentation followed public and labor testimony about recruitment quality and candidate experience; some commenters asked the city to prioritize resources to speed up critical steps and limit the number of candidates who drop out during lengthy processing.
