By Cory Shaffer
cleveland.com
CLEVELAND — Mayor Justin Bibb on Friday announced that 46 recruits have agreed to join the city’s next police academy class beginning later this month.
The latest class brings the total number of recruits to enter academy classes this year to 134, the most in any year since 2019, according to a news release.
Bibb credited the achievement to the city’s RISE Initiative that sought to stem the city’s hemorrhaging of police officers in recent years.
The initiative included a 50% pay raise, $5,000 sign-on bonuses and fast-tracked promotions for new recruits, as well as a 25% hike in pay for current officers.
The city also raised the maximum age for someone to become a police officer and held several hiring events.
“Another large class coinciding with the first full year of our RISE initiative means one thing – our recruitment efforts are working,” Bibb said in the news release.
A class in March saw the city bring in 52 recruits.
The city plans to hold another hiring event in early January.
A Cleveland.com and Plain Dealer analysis earlier this year found that from June 2023 to June 2024, 125 Cleveland police officers left the department through either retirement or resignations. That was nearly twice as many cops as departments in Columbus and Cincinnati shed, combined.
The exodus left Cleveland with 1,148 officers in early August, down more than 400 from recent years.
Several former Cleveland officers told cleveland.com they left because of the strain the job put on their families, low morale in the department and the lure of suburban departments that offered higher salaries for experienced officers, among other things.
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