The Wichita Police Department is welcoming 22 new officers who graduated Thursday from the fall recruit class.
Police Captain Aaron Moses said the recruits went through six months of rigorous training, and Moses said much of it focused Police Chief Joe Sullivan’s initiatives related to de-escalation and managing situations with people in crisis. Moses said women make up 27 percent of the new class, which is above the national average. Two of the new officers speak a foreign language, one speaks Spanish and the other speaks Russian. He said there is one new officer who has experience from another police department in Kansas.
The Police Department begins a new recruit class on January 21st, with 29 recruits. Moses said 11 of them are part of a new pre-hire program, where they are brought in before the recruit class begins so they can get experience ahead of time. He says the department will be hiring for the next class that begins in July, and they will be hired in March. Applications will be accepted on the web site wpdjobs.com
Moses said under a new contract between the city and the Fraternal Order of Police, Wichita has the highest-paid police recruits in the state, and a benefits program for parental leave with eight weeks of paid leave after a qualifying event like a birth or adoption.
