AURORA, Colo. — As the Denver Metro population continues to grow, area police departments are hiring more officers to keep up. The Aurora Police Department has the largest group of recruits it's ever seen going through the training academy.
Aurora police said the projected population for the city of Aurora in 2018 is estimated at 370,000 people. This projection means the department needs to recruit more men and women to the police force to keep up with the officer-to-citizens ratio.
"We have 42 academy recruits in the class right now and 12 lateral recruits. Next year we are looking at hiring upwards of 60 new police officers," said Aurora Police Spokesperson Bill Hummel.
The department explained the need for more officers comes from a variety of places including population growth, rate of attrition, retirements and injuries. The supply of applicants is also a challenge recruiters are currently facing.
"A lot of people don't want to be police officers right now, necessarily, so that's why our needs of recruitment are sometimes hard to fulfill. That's why we go out and we entrench ourselves in our community to get a lot of applicants from the most diverse facets that we can," Hummel said.
Applications are open for people interested in a career as a police officer in the city of Aurora. Click here to learn more and apply.
