tough week for the reputation of law enforcement video
of Memphis. Cops beating Tyree Nicholson death, his funeral last
week,
we’re men who spoke call for law enforcement reforms with the recognition that
not all police are bad, but a few bad ones.
Make the good ones,
look bad.
It was weeks ago when I invited Commander Christine, Anthony Miller, and Lieutenant
Daryl Henderson on to talk about HPD recruiting efforts
and we’ll get to that. But Commander, your thoughts on the video evidence we saw
last week that really puts a
bad.
Add light on all that you do in police work. Absolutely. As
an officer, I was, I was angry.
I was saddened as a human being, I could not understand
it. I don’t understand how someone could violate
their oath,
the badge,
our thoughts, and prayers. Go out to the Nichols family, Memphis,
Chief Davis.
And I just hope that people do understand that that action
is not representative of law enforcement as a whole and certainly not the
Houston Police Department.
So
that’s what I would have to say
Lieutenant
Anderson, you’re a part of a group.
As well. What do you look for in people who you’re trying to recruit to
make sure they don’t have those kind of Tendencies? I mean, you can’t
something’s just can’t, you can’t know but how do you try to weed out
people who might have the tendency to do? What these officers are alleged
to have done?
Well, in the recruiting division, we have a stringent hiring process
where
we start with our intake, where we start vetting them through
some preliminary criteria.
Then we go through,
Reading Comprehension
vocabulary,
Physical Agility,
but to get
You point the reels,
when they go to background,
and that’s where we really start to screen, the applicants that are background process.
And
then we sent them to psychological evaluation
which they,
they must pass a psychological evaluation before they
receive final approval
by the chief of police. And now you and the effort you’re trying to get more
recruits. You’ve been trying to do this and you like saying, hey we got ten thousand
dollars
if you want to be a use of police officer, this is may help
kind of
tilt the
Decision a little bit. Talk about that. Absolutely, we recognize that we
have to offer a competitive salary and it was low. And
so we went to the mayor and found some federal funds and offer
this hiring incentive. And so we’re really hoping that that offers
a competitive wage a living wage. And so,
you know, we’re just very excited to bring that. And I hope
that brings more people in and says, you know, hey, I really really want to
do this, but it’s nice to get a little change in my pocket. That’s a good
point. And now when they come, it’s all about, you get and some
money before.
Or you enter the academy or once you get into the academy,
how does that work?
Sir,
you got to get an academy,
okay?
So it’s
usually, after you get into the academy in her proved its use about your first
full paycheck, it’ll be twenty five hundred dollars
and about Midway through the academy, another 2500. And
then, if you passed that, get that tea called license and graduate
that’s at five thousand dollars. So, talk about the academy process,
how long is that typically and what kinds of things go
on
to get, you ready? And once you get out of
Enemy.
You may
get graduate, but you still have a lot more learning to do correct.
Well, you do our entire cycle is a, is roughly about a year.
So
you start six months in the academy,
the first three months of pretty, much academic, and
physical training.
And then once you get through your academic blocks, then you go to your,
your,
what we call the fun stuff, you go to the shooting, the driving, the scenarios,
the real-time
activities of
mimicking law enforcement
once you
A Jew eight. That’s when you go into
the field training program
which is roughly another
three to four months where you’re paired with a senior
officer days evenings and nights
for training.
And then you go through a series of evaluations
with a senior officer.
Once you pass all of that, which is roughly
nine months to a year,
then you complete our full training cycle.
This whole thing, once you become a police officer, what is the pride that goes
along with wearing the badge? I mean, I
My I
know that people once they get that once they’ve said, that’s what I want to do. Once you
get that badge, you remember,
the excitement you had when you first got that badge? Absolutely,
absolutely. And every time that I put this uniform on, I still have that Pride
because I’m able to serve my community,
and I’m able to serve it with honor,
integrity and respect.
And I’m just so proud to be able to wear this and to be part of this community.
But it is very important that we police
with legitimacy with, you know, honoring constitutional rights,
and earned the trust of that community that they entrusted.
Us
and so just very proud to wear this badge,
the challenge now
with what’s going on in some of the areas like Memphis,
when you go out you represent
to some people. You represent the bad part
sometimes
you know II joined the Houston Police Department 2020
right before George Floyd. So we’ve seen tough times
but
here in the city of Houston,
we have great support
from our community
and we have great police community relations great.
Partnerships with the community and the business community. So
these
relationships have helped us overcome
and
we’ve done well
in our recruiting effort. Well, I’m going to make sure we put all of the information. We
talked about on our website, our new Houston newsmakers
website on click2houston.com.
Thank you very much. Always good to see you guys look forward to and
I have aged out. I can’t be a cop. I’m sorry.
Alright.
Thank you again. Hey, just ahead