Police department hiring reflects community complexion

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – The City of Bowling Green’s Workforce Recruitment and Outreach Committee met Thursday night to discuss local job recruitment in the area.

One major topic, the Bowling Green Police Department.

Recruitment for police officers nationwide has been difficult, but in Bowling Green, that doesn’t seem to be the case, according to city officials.

High-quality diverse candidates top the priority list for the new hires at the police department.

According to Tiger Tooley, the human resources manager for the city, having a department that matches the community is important.

“If our public safety personnel is reflective of the community, then it becomes easier to interact with them. We build up report and relationships based on cultures. We will respect that and obviously want to be respectful of that,” said Tooley.

In 2015, 8% of sworn officers were minorities, while 11% were women.

Now, in 2021, nearly 15% are minorities and 15% are females.

In the City of Bowling Green, the population is approximately 30% minority and 51% female, according to census.gov.

The Bowling Green Police Department is not currently in a recruiting phase, but the second class of the Bowling Green Law Enforcement Academy has just begun and are a class 11 including three minority males, one female.

“The class started April 13 and is set to graduate September 10. So it’s 23 weeks, which is three weeks longer than the first class. After the class was over with we looked at some of the state requirements and again what some of the feedback was from some of the recruits, from the trainers, what worked, what didn’t work. So we added three extra weeks,” said Bowling Green Police Deputy Chief Penny Bowles.

The majority of the first class are already on patrol in the city.

The next recruiting phase will begin in the fall.