Despite stepped up recruitment efforts over the last few years, Phoenix Police have been unable to fill over 500 sworn officer positions City Council has consistently set aside money for. The numbers at the top of these bars showed how many were actually hired on average each year year since.
(Phoenix Police)
Despite more than two years of aggressive recruiting campaigns, the Phoenix Police Department remains over 500 deployable officers short of full staffing.
Although the city has consistently funded 3,125 sworn officer positions for the last four years, as of February only 2,460 were filled by fully trained officers while another 126 were in the academy, according to the latest data that department officials shared with the City Council Subcommittee on Public Safety and Justice.
“While we acknowledge we still have a lot of work ahead of us with our hiring goals, our recruitment hiring teams are working,” Assistant Police Director Court Hood told the panel.
Even with recruits included, the department remains operating at about 83% of authorized sworn staffing.
Those figures contrast sharply with Phoenix Fire, which has been able to fill 1,924 of its 2,059 funded firefighter jobs.
The gap in police positions provoked frustration from Councilman Jim Waring, the senior member of the committee, and Councilwoman Ann O’Brien — who both alluded to the fact that the number of vacancies has changed little.
“I’ve been on this committee for a long time and getting these briefings every month or so for years and it just hasn’t really picked up,” said Waring, a panel member since 2011.
He said that the department’s inability to fill hundreds of positions “is probably more of an overall commentary about big-city policing than it is about Phoenix, but it is frustrating to see.”
“I can’t even say it’s moving in the right direction,” Waring said, describing the city’s longstanding authorized staffing number as “sort of a fictitious number based on a budget from several years ago,” and arguing Phoenix has continued to grow while staffing shortages persist.
He said he wasn’t faulting the department’s outreach efforts, which have run the gamut from social media campaigns and hiring fairs to visits to schools throughout the Valley and recruitment efforts beyond Arizona.
“I know you’re trying,” Waring told department officials. “Just please try to make sure you’re doing things outside the box and you’re doing everything you possibly can to recruit mostly young people.”
He also said it appears the problem has become chronic since the pandemic as more officers reach retirement age and leave.
O’Brien noted that the city had not hired officers from about 2007 through about 2012 and that as officers reach retirement and leave, the hiring gap created in that five-year period has only increased because “we have a much larger group who can retire than we have new folks.”
“We are at a lower number of filled sworn positions than when I came on the council five years ago,” O’Brien said.
Committee Chair Kevin Robinson, a Phoenix Police Department employee for 38 years who started as a patrol officer and rose through the ranks to assistant chief, also expressed frustration.
“We have to close that gap,” he told department representatives.
Stating “I know employment services is doing what they can,” Robinson urged department officials to be even more aggressive in holding on to qualified candidates.
“I would implore both organizations (Police and Fire) to do as much as we can to wrap them up (in the hiring process) so they won’t go somewhere else because that seems to be the issue – that folks start the process and someone else over there is making more noise and they run over to that agency.”
Police officials acknowledged the continuing challenge but argued the department is beginning to gain traction after several difficult years marked by retirements, academy attrition and nationwide recruiting struggles in law enforcement.
Many answer the call when it comes to Police Academy recruits, but many never make it out successfully. The yellow bars showed how many started the academy while the blue show how many were kept and the gray shows how many quit.
(Phoenix Police)
Hood told the committee the department received 933 applications during January and February, roughly matching last year’s pace.
Officials said recruiting efforts now include:
Automated text messaging systems for applicants;
Expanded national recruiting and military outreach;
Female-focused recruiting events;
Partnerships with Arizona State University and Grand Canyon University and other higher learning institutions;
Large-scale public recruiting events jointly hosted with the Phoenix Fire Department.
One recent public safety recruiting event drew more than 500 attendees, according to city officials.
Police officials said applications increased from 375 in February to 513 in March after that event.
Still, attrition remains a major obstacle.
According to department figures presented to the subcommittee, 26 recruits had been hired during the first two months of 2026, but seven already had left the organization.
The department also acknowledged that academy graduation numbers alone do not immediately translate into deployable officers because recruits still must complete a six-month field training program.
Hood said retirements have been especially concentrated late in the calendar year, complicating efforts to show visible staffing gains even when hiring improves.
“What we experienced, especially this last year, is a large number of our retirements are focused and centered around the last few months of the year,” Hood told council members.
He said the department hopes additional staffing support and streamlined hiring systems will allow investigators to process more applicants faster.
“We can increase capacity and close that gap,” Hood said.
By contrast, Phoenix Fire Department officials painted a more optimistic staffing picture.
Fire officials reported significant gains in applicant testing after moving from one annual in-person test to multiple online testing cycles, saying applicant pools and pass rates have improved substantially.
Council members noted the contrast during the hearing.
“It looks like it’s really good news,” Waring told fire officials while discussing the department’s rising applicant numbers.
Police officials stressed that rebuilding staffing levels remains a long-term process.
The department continues trying to increase female recruiting, broaden demographic outreach and improve retention while competing in a difficult national hiring environment that has affected departments across the country.