Police staffing woes complicate reform effort in Baltimore

BALTIMORE (AP) — After a grueling defensive tactics class with a dozen other recruits, Antonio Martinez secures his expandable baton and wipes the sweat from his brow. He's getting ready to make his debut as a rookie cop on the streets of Baltimore, a city with the dual misfortune of having high rates of violence and a dysfunctional police force.

At Baltimore's police academy, the earnest 25-year-old from a law enforcement family said he wants to earn his stripes as a protector of neighborhoods. He was attracted by the agency's recruitment pitches urging police hopefuls to become part of the "greatest comeback story in America.”

“There’s clearly a goal to change things up here. I want to be part of that change," said Martinez, adjusting his department-issued duty belt.

Martinez and other cadets have an outsized job before them: help transform a beleaguered police agency struggling to reinvent itself amid a national crisis of confidence in policing. But the city's thin blue line just keeps getting thinner. The Baltimore Police Department has roughly 400 vacancies among the force’s sworn staff and its recruitment efforts can’t keep pace with those leaving their jobs. Last year, the agency hired one above attrition for the entire year.

Amid the national reckoning on policing in the U.S. since George Floyd’s killing by an officer in Minneapolis, any number of police agencies have struggled to recruit and retain law enforcers. For Baltimore, a city with chronically high rates of violent crime and a dysfunctional police force laboring under a tarnished image, there’s a constant challenge in drawing enough recruits to stem the outflow, including retirements and a churn of younger officers with roughly three to seven years on the job giving up their badges.

While it's hardly...