Aurora police look to raise bar for recruits

A new set of hiring procedures has the Aurora Police Department aiming to raise the bar for all future officers.

Aldermen on Tuesday will vote on a plan to strengthen educational requirements and weed out the less physically fit candidates early in the hiring process.

"(Police Chief Greg Thomas) has made it clear to us that he wants to maintain the high standards we currently have in place," said Alex Alexandrou, director of human resources and risk management. "The proposed amended ordinance and rules do that."

The updated educational standards require either a 2.5 minimum high school grade-point average, a similar GPA after 16 hours of college credit or a GED with a cumulative test score equivalent to the high school grade-point average.

Current requirements do not mention a minimum GED score or the college GPA requirement.

Alexandrou said newly established department rules also require candidates to take the Peace Officer Wellness Evaluation Report physical fitness test at the time of the written test.

Previously, candidates would take the physical test after completing the written exams.

"We were seeing that a lot of people could pass the written tests and then fail the physical portion," Alexandrou said. "It was a waste to spend all that money on bringing them in and testing them only to have them wash out when it came time to run the mile or lift some weights. That's an important aspect of being a police officer."

Other changes include lifting the limit of 500 applicants per testing period, charging a $20 application fee and testing annually.

"We'd go to job fairs and people would hear that we test every two years and they'd walk away," Alexandrou said. "So we're going to keep a fresher list now by testing every year."

The city also is studying whether Internet recruitment and online application forms would benefit the city.

"We've done a lot of legwork looking at best practices and this is the outcome," he said. "When the aldermen approve this we will be enhancing our pool of applicants to be even more effective, high quality officers."