GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — The Green Bay Police Department have released a new commercial on social media with the hope of attracting police officers from elsewhere to come work in Green Bay.
Lt. Jody Buth is heading up the effort. He says they have a lot of hiring to do and a pool of candidates that’s only gotten smaller over the years.
“With the Green Bay police department specifically, we’ve had a unprecedented number of retirement that I have popped up over the course of the last two years,” Buth told WTAQ. “I have twenty positions I have to full just for the year 2021.”
The number of recruits the department has drawn has dropped due to a number of factors.
“With everything that’s going on on a national level, and with the economy really taking off, we were finding that our candidate pool was starting to dwindle,” Buth said.
To get more officers knocking on the door, the commercial features officers who have come to the city from outside the area–as far away as Phoenix, Arizona and Kingston, Jamaica.
“So I thought it was kind of a different angle, to try to attract candidates from outside of the state of Wisconsin,” said Buth. “Maybe get them to come up here.”
The department is working with a social media advertising firm in order to get the commercial in front of the eyes of potential recruits. They’re specifically targeting places like New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon.
The commercial was released Friday and Buth says they’ve already gotten calls.
