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MINOT, N.D. () — Community is important in North Dakota and to the Minot Police Department.
The city has been dealing with a large staff shortage and this summer, they filled a few positions. The Minot Police Department recently hired four new officers.
“I interned here last fall and I was really taken by how community-oriented the Minot Police Department was. They just seem like they really cared about the people of the Minot community so I wanted to be a part of that,” said Officer Pfeiffer.
Each year there are four hiring sessions for the department. Currently, there are two groups of four officers that are training.
One group just finished their in-service training and some have their field training to complete.
When they’re finished, some of them need to attend the academy if they haven’t already.
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“Growing up I always knew I wanted to be a first responder. I did start with the medical side. And I knew. I was like I want to be detective one day, go into investigations,” said Officer Stebleton.
Police say in-service training is a mix of classroom and hands-on skills they learn and they apply it in different methods during hands-on training.
To become a cop, the process is easy but lengthy.
“The biggest challenge is it takes anywhere from four to six months to get an officer from hiring to being an actual officer on the street. So every shortage I say we are down 10, we will be down at least 10 for the next four to six months. Even if we hired them all today it would still take that amount of time to get them out, to where they need to be,” said Chief of Police John Klug.
And even though it’s a challenge to recruit more people, their door is always open.
Despite hiring eight officers over the last few months, they still have 10 openings to fill.
