It is 1993, and I am sitting in a high school cafeteria with a couple hundred other police officer applicants in shorts and T-shirts, completing written aptitude tests before heading straight into a physical agility course. Agencies weren’t just hiring, they were expanding, and even a midsize department could count on a deep bench of applicants. From this single group, our agency hired strong candidates for the next three academy classes.

Three decades later, that world is gone. As chiefs today know all too well, many agencies have fought to attract even a handful of qualified applicants in each pool. This trend is not unique to a single agency or region. U.S. workforce analyses have documented sharp declines in applicant interest across agencies of all sizes.¹ For example, over the past five years, Menlo Park, California, Police Department processed roughly 450 applications to make 30 hires, and half of those new recruits didn’t make it through field training. The environment chiefs face today is not the one many of them entered in the 1990s. The pressure is real, persistent, and felt at every level of the organization.

In that kind of environment, a subtle change begins to occur. Standards drift. A “maybe” becomes a “let’s give them a chance.” A borderline psychological evaluation becomes “minimally suitable, so let’s try.” A background blip becomes “we can coach that out later.” All reasonable decisions in isolation, yet over time, a series of small accommodations can become an unsettling shift in organizational expectations.

This is the challenge leaders now face. It is a wicked problem, but policing is not new to wicked problems. Whether employing  Goldstein’s Problem-Oriented Policing, the SARA model, the CompStat problem-solving process, or the OODA loop, the profession has always thrived when  disciplined thinking is applied to complex issues.

Police leaders know complex problems. They know how to break them down. They know how to respond methodically, because that is what the profession demands of them  every day.

So why not apply the same police problem-solving process to the recruitment and hiring crisis?

• Assessment: understanding the data and elements of the issue

• Identification: noting all the resources, systems, and constraints we can leverage

• Strategy: deploying a disciplined and thoughtful plan

• Accountability: reassessing, learning, adjusting, and improving

Police leaders can do this. In fact, they must, because the success of future generations of this profession depends on it.

The Law of the 18,000: Policing Is Local Everywhere

In the United States alone, there are roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies, with thousands more agencies existing worldwide. Each one is deeply shaped by local context.² Every agency reflects its community: its expectations, its culture, its rhythms, its history.

This is where many chiefs unintentionally misdiagnose their recruitment challenge. They treat policing as if it were one profession with one identity and therefore build recruitment strategies designed to appeal to everyone. Tactical imagery, K9s, SWAT teams, fast cars—it is the universal police marketing package. The problem is that most agencies, most of the time, do not spend their days on tactical operations, and modern recruits know it.

Today’s applicants are not simply looking for “a police job.” They are looking for belonging. A place aligned with their values and expectations. A community they can imagine serving. A culture they can imagine joining and thriving in.

Achieving that requires leaders to articulate who they are.

In Menlo Park, candidates routinely acknowledge that what drew them in was not tactical imagery. It was the small-town feel, the tree-lined neighborhoods, the strong relationships, and the sense of a tight knit, community-oriented department. They saw officers online who looked connected to and proud of their community. That was the attraction.

Effective recruitment begins with organizational self-knowledge:

• Who are we?

• What kind of policing do we practice?

• Who thrives here?

This foundation sets the stage for  a four-part problem-solving model.

Step 1: Assess the Problem (Clarity)

In order to address staffing challenges with the same rigor applied to operational problems, assessment must be the first step. Leaders must resist the urge to jump straight to solutions. Instead, they must obtain clarity of  the internal factors driving drift.

These five critical questions are a good place to start:

1. Where are candidates being lost?

Mapping the hiring process from beginning to end can help agencies identify delays and attrition points.³ Examine points such as initial interviews, backgrounds, psychological evaluations, academy training, field training, and probation.

2. Where are standards being stretched or inconsistently applied

This is where drift hides. Examine waiver patterns, inconsistent interview scoring, selective interpretation of psychological findings, panel biases, and decisions shaped more by workload than standards.

3. What predicts success in the agency?

Alignment between individual values and organizational culture strongly predicts performance and retention.⁴ Traits that thrive in Menlo Park Police Department include humility, curiosity, integrity, lifelong learning, and the ability to lead at any level within the organization.

4. What is the true cost of drift?

Look beyond the immediate cost of a vacancy. Examine the time and resources invested in candidates who fail months into the academy, field training, or probation, along with the operational impact of restarting the hiring process. For small agencies especially, these losses can compound quickly.

5. What should evolve, and what should never change?

Distinguish between standards that are essential to suitability and those that may appropriately evolve with the profession and community expectations. Examine which requirements protect sound judgment, integrity, psychological suitability, and fitness for duty, and which reflect preferences, practices, or philosophies that may warrant reconsideration.

When leaders define the problem precisely, drift becomes visible, and standards become easier to defend.

Step 2: Identify Resources and Processes (Consistency)

Once the problem is defined, leaders must inventory the tools, processes, people, and partners that shape their hiring pipeline. Before implementing reforms, leaders should examine the systems and processes already shaping their hiring pipeline.⁵

Start with what the agency’s hiring process already has:

• oral boards

• background investigations

• psychological evaluations

• medical examinations

• interview rubrics

• decertification and POST checks

• documentation standards

• academy partnerships

• onboarding and probation systems

 

Then, identify inconsistencies by asking these questions:

• Do panels vary widely in style or scoring?

• Does background depth fluctuate with workload?

• Are waivers consistently documented?

• Are standards applied equally?

• Does the process reflect today’s culture or yesterday’s tradition?

 

Finally, identify guardrails that may be missing:

• standardized scoring rubrics

• defined waiver protocols

• required documentation for all exceptions

• national decertification and employment history verification

• drift audits and file integrity checks

• partnerships with vetted background firms

• academy liaisons to improve coordination

Recruitment is not about finding the “best” candidate. It is about finding the right candidate for the agency.

Step 3: Strategy (Deployment)

With the problem assessed and resources identified, the next step is deploying a disciplined, intentional strategy.

Modernization is not drift.

Reducing unnecessary delays is a widely recommended strategy for improving time to hire without compromising standards.⁶ Consider the following opportunities to reduce time:

• Systematize interviews.

• Use anchored scoring.

• Make process background components parallel.

• Strengthen academy partnerships.

• Assign dedicated liaisons.

• Remove administrative bottlenecks.

Some agencies are beginning to incorporate AI-assisted recruiting, interviewing, and assessment tools into their hiring processes. These technologies may help agencies organize information, improve consistency, and supplement traditional candidate assessment, but they also introduce concerns involving bias, transparency, and appropriate human oversight. Technology can inform sound judgment, but it should not replace it.⁷

Cultural evolution is not drift.

Modern policing requires both tactical readiness and community-centered skill sets, reflecting both “warrior” and “guardian” characteristics. National recruitment guidance increasingly emphasizes finding officers with the interpersonal, communication, problem-solving, and other attributes needed by the specific agency and community.⁸ This is adaptation, not compromise.

This is adaptation, not compromise.

Drift, by contrast, is the quiet lowering of expectations.

This dynamic mirrors what organizational scholars describe as the normalization of deviance and what high-reliability organization research identifies as accumulating risk from small, unexamined exceptions.⁹

To resist drift, agencies must embed

• documented exception pathways

• mandatory second review processes

• internal reporting cadences for waivers

• alignment between academy and field training expectations

The goal is not to lower standards. It is to uphold them more effectively.

Step 4: Accountability (Constant Reassessment)

The final step mirrors the last phase of any policing problem-solving model: reassess, evaluate, and adjust. Continuous improvement models in policing, including CompStat-era reforms, highlight the value of ongoing reassessment and adaptation.¹⁰

Staffing resilience is not a human resources department  function. It is an organizational function. Recruitment, academy mentorship, field training, and probationary evaluation all touch different areas of the organization. Therefore, solutions must be built and owned collaboratively.

• Recruitment officers analyze marketing and application trends.

• Field training officers (FTOs) assess academy alignment and trainee readiness.

• Supervisors identify early performance indicators.

• Command staff sets tone and consistency.

• Officers at every level serve as ambassadors and culture carriers.

This is where “leadership at every level” becomes real.

Reassessment protects standards. Agencies should regularly review

• hiring outcomes

• waiver patterns

• academy graduation rates

• field training performance

• probationary success

• first-year retention

• early wellness indicators

• feedback from trainees and FTOs

Drift occurs when agencies stop looking. Accountability occurs when they choose to look continuously.

Five Actions Chiefs and Command Staff Can Take Right Now

The world of policing has changed. Applicant pools are smaller, expectations are higher, and the margin for error is thinner. But drift is not inevitable. Agencies can protect standards and improve outcomes by taking deliberate, disciplined steps starting now.

1. Conduct an honest, data-driven assessment of the hiring pipeline. It must be defined to be fixed or adapted.

2. Clarify the agency’s identity and recruit to it. The organizational culture is already recruiting for or against the agency.

3. Protect non-negotiables and modernize everything else. Modernization is not drift; it is discipline.

4. Engage  the entire organization in recruitment and development. Everyone has a role in shaping new officers. That is leadership at every level.

5. Institutionalize regular reassessment. Use the same continuous improvement mindset applied to operational problems.

Staffing challenges are real. But policing has never been defined by obstacles, only by how leaders respond to them. With clarity, consistency, and leadership at every level, police organizations can meet this moment without compromising the standards that define the profession. d

Notes:

¹Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), The Workforce Crisis, and What Police Agencies Are Doing About It (PERF, 2019).

²International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), The State of Recruitment: A Criss for Law Enforcement (IACP, 2019).

 ³PERF, Responding to the Staffing Crisis: Innovations in Recruitment and Retention, Critical Issues in Policing Series (PERF, 2023).

⁴Amy L. Kristof-Brown, Ryan D. Zimmerman, and Erin C. Johnson, “Consequences of Individual’s Fit at Work: A Meta Analysis of Person-Job, Person-Organization, Person-Group, and Person-Supervisor Fit,” Personnel Psychology 58, no. 2 (2005): 281–342.

⁵PERF, Responding to the Staffing Crisis.

⁶Kevin Morison, Hiring for the 21st Century Law Enforcement Officer: Challenges, Opportunities, and Strategies for Success (Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2017).

⁷Christian P. Quinn, Amanda K. Bruner, and Charles N. Giberti Sr., “The AI Transformation—From Hiring to the Field: AI Will Intersect the Career of Every Police Officer,” Police Chief 92, no. 4 (2025): 32–37.

⁸Morison, Hiring for the 21st Century Law Enforcement Officer.

⁹Diane Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision (University of Chicago Press, 1996); Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected, 2nd ed. (Wiley, 2007).

¹⁰Mark H. Moore and Anthony A. Braga, The “Bottom Line” of Policing (PERF, 2003).

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Please cite as

Dave Norris, “Standards Under Stress: A Problem Solving Framework for Police Recruitment” Police Chief Online, October 7, 2026.