Elgin police to recruit in Puerto Rico, 13 states outside Illinois

The Elgin Police Department is sending a team to Puerto Rico to recruit officer candidates while also expanding its testing to 13 states outside Illinois, officials said.

The goal is to cast a wider net to recruit the best applicants with an eye toward Spanish-speaking officers, Police Chief Jeff Swoboda said Thursday.

"It's a bold move, but we're going to invite and go after as many applicants as we can," he said. "Being bilingual is a skill that is definitely beneficial to Elgin."

Deputy Chief Bill Wolf agreed. "Every additional officer that we get that's bilingual just makes us a higher-performing police department," he said. People who speak Spanish will not get preferential treatment nor extra points during the testing process, he said.

Three police officers and a supervisor will leave Monday for a weeklong trip to Puerto Rico, where they will attend a university job fair and administer the test three times at three different locations, Wolf said.

The trip, including local advertising, airfare, lodging and testing, will cost $5,243 to be funded by money set aside for diversity initiatives, Wolf said. Thirty-five people have signed up for the test already, he said.

"I recognize that $5,000 is a lot of money," Swoboda said. "However, the costs - both financial and in other ways - of not being reflective of the community can be expensive as well."

An estimated 44 percent of Elgin's 110,000 residents are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About 39 percent speak Spanish at home, data shows.

Among Elgin's 180 officers, 10.6 percent are Hispanic, 80.4 percent are white, 6.7 percent are black and 1.6 percent are Asian. About 22 officers speak Spanish.

"We can have shifts, the midnight shift especially, where nobody working on particular days speaks Spanish," Wolf said.

Officers use interpreters via the language telephone line, but that's less than ideal, he said.

"When somebody is in a dire emergency and does not understand English, those are valuable seconds that can be lost," he said.

Additionally, the police department has contracted with the National Testing Network, which has testing centers in 13 different states, Wolf said. That isn't costing the city any money, but applicants are charged $40 for the test, Wolf said.

"This is the first time we've actually tried to look out of state for applicants as opposed to just our communities," he said.

A total of 286 applicants took the written exam when it was last administered in July 2013, Wolf said. Of those, 49 were Hispanic. Seventeen applicants made the hiring list, five of them Hispanic, he said.

Wolf said the department is enhancing its recruiting efforts in several ways, including having tables at local festivals, meeting with middle school and high school students, and taping a promotional video shown at Marcus Elgin Cinema.

Councilwoman Rose Martinez said she hopes the Puerto Rico trip will turn into a long-term investment.

"For many years we've done the same old thing, and it's not working," she said. "It's not only Puerto Rico but 13 other states. I think it's a great idea, because that gives us a better choosing. We still want the cream of the crop."

Elgin Area School District U-46 has recruited staff members in Puerto Rico, and even abroad.

"Many years ago we recruited staff from Mexico, and three years ago we recruited staff from Spain," U-46 spokesman Pat Mogge said. "This past year we sent two individuals to Puerto Rico and recruited 13 teachers who are now teaching in our school district."

Councilman John Prigge said he objects to the expense for police recruiting in Puerto Rico. He was among a minority of council members who opposed making diversity a strategic goal for the city.

"I'm all for casting out a wider net if this council continues to say we need more Spanish speakers," he said. "But to leave our shores - that whole thing is a mystery to me. I look at our unemployment rate and I'm mystified."

Prigge said he's asked for the item to be discussed at the city council meeting on Wednesday.

Swoboda said this first trip to Puerto Rico will be a test in itself.

"If it doesn't produce the results that we want," he said, "we'll try someplace else."