11-01-2021 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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vacancy and both candidates serve in volunteer roles with our organization and grew up in the Lino Lakes community. In an effort to continue with the success we have experienced utilizing the CSO program as a feeder program for Police Officers, I would like to bring both of these candidates on as part-time CSOs. Both of these CSO candidates are enrolled in academic programs to meet the educational requirements to become a police officer in Minnesota. Our current CSO is currently taking college courses to be POST eligible in late June of 2022. This CSO continues to perform at a level that would make him a strong candidate to be promoted to Police Officer when he finishes his academic requirements to become the 28th police officer for our community in the summer 2022. Contracting out for police and firefighter background investigations The process of hiring police officers in Minnesota has become extremely competitive over the last 2 years. During our previous hiring processes we have found that we are often racing other metro agencies for high quality police officer candidates. The background investigations portion of our hiring process has proven to be problematic for our agency. In the last two hiring processes we have identified police officer candidates and moved them on to the background investigation portion of the process only to lose them to other agencies that were further along in the process than us or completed their backgrounds before us. Our background investigations are currently conducted by our Police Investigators and their work on background investigations is secondary to their criminal investigative case load. We have learned that some agencies are working with retired police investigators and contract with these individuals to solely complete background investigations for police officer and firefighter candidates at a rate of $35 per hour (no benefits). These contracted background investigators do not have any criminal investigative load; therefore, the background investigations are completed faster. With the anticipated increase hiring of firefighters in 2022 coupled with the on-going police officer hiring this is an opportunity to determine if contracting out for background investigations is a viable option for Lino Lakes with no increase in the requested 2022 budget. Staff is requesting Council direction on: 1. Delaying the hiring of 28th police officer to July 1, 2022. 2. Hiring a third CSO for the first half of 2022 and return to CSO staffing of 2 when the 28th police officer is hired. 3. Contract with retired police investigators to conduct police and firefighter backgrounds as part of our hiring process. There would be no increase in the 2022 requested budget for the Police Division to move forward with this proposal.