IN PURSUIT OF RECRUITS TIGHTER AD BUDGET TESTS LAPD DRIVE TO FILL RANKS PROSPECTS GET HELP TO SHAPE UP.

Byline: RACHEL URANGA

Staff Writer

Even as it scrambles to add 600 officers by 2009, the LAPD has slashed its recruiting budget by nearly 70 percent, which some fear will hamper its ability to compete for top-quality applicants.

While the 2007-08 budget the City Council approved last week boosts funding for the Los Angeles Police Department by 4.5 percent -- to $1.2 billion -- it also cuts money for recruiting from $3.2 million to $1 million.

Those trying to identify and lure qualified candidates say their task will become more difficult with such tight resources.

"It's going to be tough because the name of the game in recruitment is advertisement," said Cmdr. Kenneth Garner, who heads the LAPD's recruiting operation.

Members of the LAPD team find themselves sitting shoulder to shoulder with other peace-officer recruiters at job fairs and reading federal recruiting ads on the backs of buses as they sit in traffic.

"We are going to have to be even more aggressive than we are now," Garner said. "You almost have to be like an athletic recruiter because the best candidates have their choice of where to go."

Charm helps

Garner said the department will increasingly have to rely on the charm of the department's two dozen recruiters and on a series of videos, including a Hollywood-style video portraying chase scenes and personal appeals from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief William Bratton.

But City Councilman Dennis Zine and other critics worry that the LAPD has lowered its hiring standards as it tries to get from the current 9,400 officers to the goal of 10,000.

"There's quality and then quantity," said Zine, a retired LAPD sergeant who heads the council's Personnel Committee.

"I am getting the impression that the motive is not quality but quantity. When you start dropping the standard, you are reducing it for a specific reason."

Zine said many of the recent graduates of the Police Academy are overweight.

On Friday, the supervisor who oversees fitness testing for new LAPD recruits resigned amid allegations that recruiting numbers were increased by loosening standards. The department also plans to hire a nutritionist to help get officers in shape.

Earlier this year, an investigator resigned amid allegations that he had failed to make proper background checks on more than a dozen recruits. At least one rookie has been removed from the department.

In addition, the department was criticized for allowing the hiring of recruits who had admitted to experimenting with hard drugs in the past -- a policy change that was later rescinded.

Despite Zine's concerns, Personnel Department officials say policy is firmly upheld, and no recruit who fails to meet standards is being admitted to the Police Academy.

Self-recruiting rare

Brandi Scimone -- a slim college graduate who chooses her words carefully -- always wanted to be a police officer.

"The appealing thing about being an officer is the confidence and status," she said.

Her grandfather and father were LAPD officers, and her mother was a sheriff's deputy. So after graduating from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, the 25-year-old tracked down a testing center and applied to join the LAPD.

"For my family, it was a tradition," she said.

But Scimone is a rare find among recruits. And Garner said the LAPD is trying to look beyond those already knocking at the department's doors.

In addition to boosting the department's numbers, Garner is trying to broaden diversity on the force. The force now is 41percent non-Hispanic white, 12percent African-American, 38percent Latino and 8percent Asian/Pacific Islander.

Fanning out in teams, recruiters are targeting military veterans, as well as Latino, Asian and African-American communities and gay and lesbian groups. "It's one thing to have a poster that says we are hiring. It's another to have a poster at every church, every barber shop," Garner said.

Reward offered

Desperate to fill the ranks of the chronically understaffed LAPD, recruiters have been searching out unconventional ways to find officers.

Between run-of-the-mill trips to college campuses and military bases, the department is offering neighborhood councils $1,000 for a new recruit who can pass the Police Academy's rigorous training.

There are also "coffee talks" hosted by veteran officers and a new mentoring system that pairs recruits with veteran officers, such as Sgt. Cassandra Britt-Nickerson, a recruiter.

A 17-year veteran, Britt-Nickerson said she looks for recruits beyond those coming straight out of the military and those with criminal-justice degrees. She looks at some not on a law enforcement track.

For example, she runs a special coffee talk for African-American women to hear frank discussions about what it's like to be a mom and a police officer -- and to work for an agency that has often had strained relationships with the African-American community.

"It's an important assignment. You are out there picking the next officers. For some people it's a lifelong dream. As a female African-American, it's my job to dispel a lot of myths," she said.

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

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6 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Carlos Gutierrez, 19, of Canoga Park stretches in the officer candidate assistance program last week at Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

(2 -- color) LAPD Officer Mark Horton leads police candidates in physical training.

(3 -- 4) Eric Roach of Santa Clarita performs crunches in the police candidate assistance program at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Below, candidates Roach, Carlos Gutierrez and Edward Davis rest after their run.

(5 -- 6) Los Angeles Police Department Officer Mark Horton, above, runs with police candidates while Officer Paul Fields watches, below.

Alex Collins/Special to the Daily News