Siler City Town, police department struggle to fill positions

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SILER CITY — Staffing shortages across the country have led to closed dining rooms and abbreviated hours at fast food restaurants and interruptions in supply chains for retailers and manufacturers, just for starters.

But closer to home, municipalities have suffered, too. The town of Siler City has so many vacant positions, for example, that it hosted a job fair last Thursday in an effort to fill openings across its departments.

Human Resources Director Nancy Darden was on-site to help coordinate the event at the Paul Braxton Gym near downtown Siler City, saying that with the exception of Siler City’s fire department, every department had openings it hadn’t been able to fill.

“We have several vacancies within the town,” Darden said. “We wanted to do something specific to reach out to the citizens of Siler City.”

Siler City has 10 full-time positions open, she said, as well as a number of part-time vacancies. Those include a maintenance superintendent position in the Parks and Recreation Department, a customer service representative for the license plate agency, and a full-time town planner.

“We don’t get the quantity of applications that we did a couple of years ago,” Darden said. “Obviously there’s COVID to attribute some of the shortage to, but the workforce is starting to come back around.”

Siler City’s police department, for example, is seeking to fill six patrol officer positions and a telecommunicator position not related to patrolling duties.

The police department normally has 27 officers, but at the moment, employs just 21 according to Police Chief Mike Wagner. On top of that, the department is budgeted to hire three new officers every year for the next three years. But the lack of candidates to fill those spots has Wagner frustrated.

“I think there is not just one factor that discourages people from becoming a police officer,” he said.

The fallout from the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and calls to “defund” the police have driven people away from careers in law enforcement, Wagner said. Filling positions in the department was difficult even before Floyd’s death last year, but the protests which followed worsened the situation.

“Every police chief will tell you the officer in that whole George Floyd incident was a criminal,” Wagner said. “There have been movements that have called to defund the police since then, and we can see a year later that (in) those towns and cities that have gone that route, it has backfired.”

Wagner said police departments, including Siler City’s, are also struggling to retain officers. Law enforcement officers work long and grueling shifts, particularly when departments are understaffed.

“Our shifts run short every single day,” he said. “It’s been tougher to give guys their days off, and every element of day-to-day operations — some parts of it, if not all — sometimes have been compromised.”

Another contributing factor here and nationwide is the retirement rate in law enforcement.

“I think over the last 10 years, we have seen retirements increase and the applicants decrease,” he said. “However, in the last 18 months, we have seen a drastic increase in retirements and a significant drop in applicants.”

Wagner says the pandemic has helped drive those increases and decreases.

“We’ve had officers battle COVID, we’ve had people out who have had some type of COVID exposure, and so the shifts are short,” he said.

By participating in the Siler City job fair, Wagner said he hoped his department would attract more local applicants.

“Events like this are an attempt to get people out and get a conversation started,” he said.

Wagner said he welcomed candidates with various skillsets, as long as they complete their basic law enforcement training.

“I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve started talking to someone with a history degree or an accounting degree or some type of business degree,” he said. “And we have a lot of fraud cases. We need accountants to work to fight white collar crime because it’s all about those numbers. So it’s not always about having a criminal justice degree.”

Wagner said the need for police in Siler City has only increased over the last year and a half. The department’s annual report, released to Siler City Commissioners recently, indicated significant increases in the number of violent crime and sexual assault cases it’s been handling.

“Violent crime is the highest it has ever been,” Wagner said. “Crimes are being committed with weapons such as knives, guns and machetes in some cases, so yes, it is elevated.”

Wagner said anyone interested in joining the force can contact him to find out a way to access the necessary training to become an officer.

“There are so many things a dialogue can create,” Wagner said. “If you know nothing about policing, and you’re sort of curious about it, I will sit down with you and share the commitment to service, what we do and how much it impacts our community.”

All Siler City agency job openings, including the police department’s, can be found on the town’s website.

Reporter Taylor Heeden can be reached at theeden@chathamnr.com.