What do USC head football coach Pete Carroll and the Simi Valley Police Department have in common?

They both rely on good recruiting.

According to Sgt. David Livingstone, head of recruitment for the department, demand for police officers has reached a pinnacle across the country, creating what he described as a “buyer’s market for people who want to go into law enforcement.”

“Right now there are a lot of agencies that are competing with each other to get the best qualified officers,” Livingstone said. “Recruitment is a big issue all over the country because we’re finding a shortage of people who are interested in coming into a career in law enforcement.”

Simi Valley Councilmember and Police Foundation President Steve Sojka attributes the nationwide shortage to the ongoing military effort overseas.

“They’re having troubles recruiting, obviously, because of the war; it’s taking a lot of potential officers,” Sojka said. “That is always the case in any wartime situation. So we’re just having to get more creative in recruiting.”

One way the department is doing that is by taking advantage of media most commonly used by the entertainment industry: DVDs and digital video.

The department recently released its new recruitment video on DVD and plans to create a link to the video online. The 15minute production was created inhouse by a film production company and paid for with money from the Police Foundation.

“It’s something we just wrapped our arms around, and if it helps us recruit more officers, that’s a good thing,” Sojka said.

According to Livingstone, recruitment is the responsibility of every officer. In addition, a dedicated recruitment team made up of officers from throughout the agency brainstorms different ways to get the department’s message out to possible future cadets.

“We are advertising a little bit more so we can get the word out that we’re hiring, but it’s difficult,” the sergeant said. “You have a lot of different law enforcement agencies out there and we have to stay up with the crowd if we want to get our name out there.”

Latest crop

Just this past week, the equivalent of an impressive recruiting class in college sports—four new officers, all with real law enforcement experience—was sworn in by the department. Coming from as far away as Hawaii and as nearby as L.A., the new hires put the number of police officers at 127, a total that surpasses the department’s goal of having one officer for every 1,000 residents.

“It’s very rare we (hire) four at once, but we’re ecstatic about it,” Livingstone said.

Newcomers include Jeff Quartararo, a Simi High graduate, and Frank Panza, an officer who started his policing career in Simi just five months ago before transferring briefly to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

“He came back primarily because he enjoyed working for Simi Valley,” Livingstone said. “Sometimes when you go to another agency, you realize you can compare the two agencies and

apparently for him the quality of career and everything was better here.”

Rounding out the foursome are Michael Heller, a transfer from the Honolulu Police Department, and Scott McLemen, who comes to Simi Valley after seven years with the Portland, Ore. Police Bureau.

The fact that all four officers came over from other agencies,

Mayor Paul Miller noted, is a testament to the department’s strong reputation.

“I recall when I first took over as chief, you could not get a lateral officer to come here. They refused to do it,” said Miller, who served as police chief from 1982 to 1994. “So we had to send everyone through the academy because we could not find experienced officers.

“What’s really great is that this department is so good that we have our pick of the cream of the crop when it comes to experienced officers, which saves us a lot of time and money so we are happy about that.”

From mocked to model

Sojka also recalls a time when it was tough for the SVPD to recruit officer candidates.

In fact, he said, the local police force was once the laughingstock of Southern California law enforcement agencies.

Sojka’s late father, Bob Sojka, was one of Simi’s first 22 officers after the city got its own police force in 1969. That year, Sojka said, the city’s founders decided to implement a new brand of policing; the result was disastrous.

“They weren’t even real police. It was called the Community Safety Agency,” Sojka said. “They didn’t have the blackand-white police uniforms; they wore blazers. And they didn’t carry guns. The idea was to get the community involved in policing.”

Not surprisingly, Sojka said, the agency the old Simi Valley Enterprise dubbed “The L.A. Rejects” didn’t last long.

“I think it (lasted) about a year,” he said. “It just got to the point where we wanted to become a legitimate police force.”

Sojka said he evokes this unsettling memory to demonstrate how drastically the department’s image has changed, a factor critical in recruiting.

“We’ve come full circle,” he said. “It’s very satisfying.”

Recruitment never rests

Even with the recent hirings, Livingstone said, the department can’t afford to rest on its laurels when it comes to recruiting.

With officers retiring and transferring on a fairly consistent basis, the need for new bodies to protect and serve the growing valley is never-ending, he said.

“In my 18 years here, I haven’t ever seen it where we had enough officers to the point where we didn’t have to hire any new ones,” Livingstone said. “In a sense, we’re like a team like the Lakers or the Dodgers. We’re always having people leaving or retiring, but we always have to keep enough people on the team to do the job right.”