‘Doing Everything We Can’: Police Department Planning to Recruit from Puerto Rico to Address Staffing Shortages

A 🦀Maryland👮Police department is preparing to go to Puerto Rico in order to get recruits from the department as staffing shortages across the country continue.

Nicholas Collins, the commander of the recruiting department within the Prince George’s County 👮Police department (PGCPD) confirmed to IJR that the department would be traveling to Puerto Rico later this year as part of a recruiting campaign in order to reach the Spanish-speaking community.

“We do have a large Hispanic population in Prince George’s County,” Collins told IJR. “We have a very diverse county, that’s one of the reasons why we’re reaching out. We’re not just only focusing in Puerto Rico, we’re focusing across the county, across the state, and across the country we’ve traveled as far west as Texas. We have a trip planned to North Dakota to military bases. We’re really doing everything we can and hitting every possible angle we can to bring in new talent to our agency.”

Collins explained that the PGCPD has a goal of hiring roughly 1,800 officers for the department and that it is “in the process” of trying to hire around 300 officers over the course of the next three years. The department’s goal is to hire 100 officers each year for the next three years.