GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A Green Bay city council member is suggesting the city recruit police officers who left their previous job due to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Like many other cities across the country, Green Bay is struggling to hire police officers. It’s a story FOX 11 reported on Sunday night.
With ten police officer positions vacant out of 187, alderperson Chris Wery tells FOX 11 he wants to get ahead of the issue before more officers leave or retire.
“It seems like every day you wake up and there’s shots fired somewhere.”
Just as Governor Ron DeSantis has pitched in Florida, Wery suggests offering $5,000 bonuses for police officers willing to relocate to Green Bay.
Wery specifically says there should be good candidates to choose from in cities where vaccines were recently mandated for officers.
“We keep complaining we can’t get people to apply, why not take advantage of that?”
FOX 11 asked Wery where he believes the money should come from.
“Actually the federal money that we’re getting the 20 some million dollars, a portion of it you can use for safety, so that would be a logical place to take it from.”
FOX 11 asked Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich about Wery’s idea.
“Definitely interested in exploring the option of covering relocation costs for officers who are interested in working for the Green Bay Police Department, but not necessarily supportive of getting involved in the politicization of one’s vaccine status,” said Genrich.
Genrich says he’d like to ramp up marketing efforts to recruit candidates. Police Chief Chis Davis agrees.
“People find our agency if they’re looking for another place to work. We get a little better return on investment sometimes from good marketing of open positions. We support our police department and I’ve demonstrated that over the course of the last few budgets, so we believe we’re a really attractive place.”
Genrich proposed adding five police officer positions back to the Green Bay Police Department in his 2020 budget proposal, which the city council included in its final plan.
FOX 11 asked Genrich if he has considered a vaccinate mandate for the police department.
“Certainly we’ve been following what has been going on in different municipalities across the state. Our human resources director and our law department have been engaged in conversations with municipalities across Wisconsin to see what others are doing, but it’s not something we’re actually contemplating.”
Chief Davis did not know how many of his officers are vaccinated against COVID-19.
It has been reported larger police departments across the country have lost hundreds of officers due to vaccine mandates.
As of last week, about one third (more than 4,500 employees) of Chicago’s police department still had not submitted their vaccination status.
Comments