What does Omaha Mayor John Ewing intend to do about the shortage of police officers? Is Omaha’s streetcar project on schedule and what direction does Omaha grow now that it’s reached boundary limits on the south and east? Nebraska Public Media’s Dale Johnson reached out to the mayor for answers, starting with a police shortage of over 100 officers.
Dale Johnson: Curious, sir, with your 25 years of experience in the Omaha Police Department, retiring as a deputy chief, does that give you any leverage, or to what extent does it give you leverage more than other mayors when taking on an officer shortage?
John Ewing Jr.: I’ve actually done recruiting, and I’ve done the background process, and I’ve helped develop the recruiting process while I was on the police department. So I think that gave me some insights, as well as understanding the deficiencies that we had back then, and some ways to be able to make things more efficient. So one of the things they’re doing a really good job of in human resources now is they’re giving people multiple opportunities to test and to apply, and then they tell them when the class is going to start, and that gives people an opportunity to kind of pick when they want to start, and also allows for us to continue to gather applications on a continuous basis versus a set application period. And so what we’re seeing, quite honestly, is they are being able to hire a significant number of police officers. By this time next year, we should have hired pretty close to 100 police officers, which, depending on how many people retire next year, puts us in a significant position to be able to address the shortage. So we could be somewhere very close to full strength by the end of next year…