PEORIA, Ill. — While Peoria Police launch a new lateral hiring incentives blitz we’re seeing some of the positive results of such a campaign already at the Peoria County Sheriff’s Office, which has been doing the same thing since last year.
According to information posted to the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page, it has been offering between $5,000 and $15,000 signing bonuses for new lateral deputy and corrections officer hires.
“We’ve been making some good headway on that. I think I’ve hired six corrections officers in the last six weeks and I’m only down two deputies at the moment,” says Peoria County Sheriff Chris Watkins.
He says the Sheriff’s Office has also sent several handfuls of raw recruits for training at the academy as well.
Watkins says there are some inherent difficulties with lateral hires. He says with skilled cops in such high demand these days — lateral hire candidates are currently able to jump from one police agency to another, collecting tens of thousands of dollars in signing bonuses along the way.
“We try to tie it together where you have to stay here for so long before you get the bonus”, but Watkins says those law officers will still have the incentive to jump to another agency, even at that point.
“Who really suffers with these is sometimes those smaller departments because they don’t have the budget to offer a lateral hire like that.”
Despite that, Watkins says he’s happy to see the high level of experience being added to his patrol and jail deputy ranks and continues to hope more home grown law enforcement candidates will step forward in the future.
He says those officers often tend to become more loyal local public servants.
