Daily Herald opinion: Streamlining for success: Speeding up the police officer hiring process can have positive results

When you read that a suburb is slashing its hiring time for police officers because of a staffing crisis, a couple of questions immediately come to mind.

It’s natural, for one, to ask if speeding up the process is going to compromise the goal of finding the best candidates to fill those positions.

It’s also worth asking how other suburbs are keeping their ranks filled.

Facing a hiring crisis, Schaumburg appears to have answered both of those questions well.

The village is cutting its hiring process from six months down to two months because there are 13 vacancies among the department’s 119 positions, Daily Herald writer Eric Peterson detailed in Sunday’s paper.

“Being short officers as we are can lead to burnout or officers being tired,” Schaumburg Mayor Tom Dailly told Peterson. “We don’t want our officers out there in that condition.”

Cutting four months off the process sounds dramatic, but the move gets Schaumburg in line with other suburbs in the region that use a two-month process.

The village is hoping that easing the educational requirements to an associate degree and doing background checks in-house will get the village to full capacity in 18 to 24 months.

Schaumburg is also including the police chief in the hiring process, something that other suburbs already are doing.

One thing Schaumburg isn’t changing is involving the fire and police commission in the hiring process. The five-member panel will continue to play a role, police chief Bill Wolf said.

As Peterson detailed, other suburbs have faced similar hiring issues and are addressing them in different ways.

Like Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates still uses a commission in the hiring process, but the village has eliminated the written exam and considers veteran status in lieu of a degree.

Naperville is actively recruiting college athletes and establishing set interview dates with its commission to save time.

Everyone wants the best candidates protecting and serving in the suburbs.

It’s clear that Schaumburg needed to do something to address its officer shortage.

The last thing you want is an overworked police force fueling more staff shortages.

The village looks like it has landed on a process that addresses the staffing shortage and keeps the best and brightest serving the community.