Kansas City Police Department sees largest recruiting class of the decade

    KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KMBC) -- The largest recruiting class for the Kansas City Police Department this decade is part of an ongoing effort to bring the department to full employment.

On Monday, nearly all of the 41 new officers were filling out paperwork at KCPD Headquarters downtown.

The new officers face six months at the police academy, followed by a “break-in period” of ten weeks of field training before being assigned to various locations within the patrol division.

One of the new officers is Renee Rodarte Arnsdorff, who has already worked at KCPD at the front desk of the Metro Patrol Division for the past year and a half.

“I always felt inclined to do more. And I submitted my application, and luckily, I got approved and I can join this academy class. Personally, I'm Latina, Mexican, very proud of that. I look forward to being able to be one of those people that I can go on call and translate for me and my people and give them that. You know, there's not a lot of people that can translate them and truly see what's the problem, what they need help with,” she said.

In 2022, the U.S. Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into KCPD’s hiring practices and the treatment of minorities and women within the department.

In the final days of the Biden Administration, the Justice Department sent a letter on January 17 stating the investigation had concluded, and the department had “decided to close the matter without further action.”

Taylor Tschirhart, a former basketball player at Fort Scott Community College, believes that her sports experience will help her in her new job as a police officer.

“Everyone here talks about family, and that's what sports correlates with. You're working together every day to get better and improve. So that's exactly the mindset I'm going in with,” she said.

“I've worked all jobs where it's a male-dominated field, so I'm not intimidated by it at all. I think it's great that more women are coming out here and proving themselves and showing that they are worthy and have the same mental and physical toughness as the men that come out here.”

An estimated 26 percent of Kansas City’s population is Black.

One ongoing challenge for KCPD is recruiting and hiring Black candidates.

In the new class, there is one Black person.

Sergeant Gordon Herndon with KCPD Employment and Recruitment said the cultural hurdle in the Black community is deeply rooted. Even after 25 years at KCPD, members of his own family still give him a hard time about being a police officer.

“We don't specifically target just one type of person, but we want the department to mirror what Kansas City has. So, those in the past that have said that they want to see our department looking the other way. This is a time for you to step up,” he said. “And actually, instead of just talking the talk, it's time to walk the walk. I did the exact thing. I looked at the news one day and I didn't like what I saw, and I got off my couch and came out and applied.”

KCPD finished 2024 with 1,137 officers, more than at the beginning of the year for the first time this decade.

However, even with the new officers, KCPD is still short by 250 officers from what’s considered full employment: 1,408.

The department is still in the process of recovering from a pandemic-era issue when there were no recruiting classes from 2019 through 2021.

Last year, the city approved higher pay for officers and revoked the residency requirement, allowing people working for the department to live within a 30-mile radius of Kansas City.

Herndon said these changes have helped with recruiting.

The last time KCPD finished a year with more than 1,400 officers was at the end of 2013, when there were 1,427.