City agencies in the Sugar Land and Missouri City area are facing 30 police officer vacancies combined, as of this summer. Additionally, the county is seeing shortages including 55 detention officers at the Fort Bend County Jail, according to data from the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office.
“Our department has not been fully staffed in over eight years,” Missouri City Police Chief Brandon Harris said. “We are constantly competing with surrounding agencies for an ever-shrinking pool of qualified applicants.”
Two-minute impact
Missouri City Police Department vacancies were at an all-time high in 2022 with the department lacking 31 officers, causing the department to get creative with scheduling, such as using 12-hour shifts, Harris said. Since then, the department’s vacancies have shrunk in half to 15 vacancies.
“My primary goal for the department has been to be fully staffed and to have measures in place to retain officers for the long term,” Harris said. “With full staffing, we are able to be more proactive in our efforts to keep our city safe.”
“When I got here [two years ago], the police department was doing well and was almost fully staffed,” he said. “We ... had two vacancies.”Staffing shortages can affect agencies by putting a strain on officers who are having to work overtime with little to no days off, said Tyler Owen, social media and communications manager for the Texas Municipal Police Association. The shortages can also affect officer time for responding when there is an influx of calls.
To combat vacancies, both the Sugar Land and Missouri City police departments have upped pay and offered various incentives to improve recruitment and retention, officials said.
In July, Sugar Land City Council approved a $2.23 million shift to a step pay system for law enforcement, which provides increments in an employee’s salary over time rather than the traditional merit-based pay. The step pay also raised an officer’s base pay from $69,784 to $75,605.
The department also offers additional incentives such as stipends ranging from $600-$1,800 for educational degrees and certifications.
Meanwhile, Missouri City City Council approved a 4.4% raise for police officers with a new base of $68,110 in April and a $10,000 signing incentive for entry-level officers. This comes after a two-phased salary study released in late 2022 and early 2023 that showed a majority of city employee salaries were near the bottom of the area market.
Missouri City also changed the maximum hiring age of officers from 45 to 55 in July 2023, Community Impact reported.
Law enforcement nationwide saw 50% more resignations, a 20% spike in retirements and a 5% drop in the number of sworn officers from 2019 to 2022, according to a survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, a police research and policy nonprofit.
Owen said he believes this is a result of fewer recruits and more officers leaving the field due to low pay, and negative public perception of officers.
The Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office is also experiencing shortages in its detention staff for the county jail. The shortages have caused employees to work mandatory overtime hours, including an extra shift, to ensure the jail is meeting its state-mandated staffing, Sheriff Eric Fagan said.
“The staffing at the sheriff’s office in the past five years has never been like it is now; it’s never been this drastic,” he said.
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the state’s regulatory agency, requires a staffing ratio of one staff member for every 48 inmates. The county’s staffing rate supports 578 inmates, although the inmate population fluctuates between 900-950, FBCSO Assistant Chief Deputy Manuel Zamora said.
To reduce the stress of overtime on employees, FBCSO officials asked Fort Bend County commissioners to either:
- Increase detention staff pay and benefits by 11% to 15%
- Enter into an agreement with a private correctional facility to manage 322 inmates for a three-year period for $10.57 million per year
Local departments have increased recruitment efforts to fill rosters by changing marketing and attending more career fairs, officials said.
With so few recruits coming in, it will take some time to rebuild and expand the number of law enforcement officers in the state, Owen said. The average police academy takes five months to complete with some departments having academies that last over a year.
In the last two to three months, there has been a slight increase of more recruits enrolling in academies in Texas, Owen said.
“With the sparked interest [and] the slight increase that we’ve seen over the last few months, we hope that maintains because, quite honestly, it could take years for us to get back to where we need to be,” he said.
