Phoenix police are still more than 500 officers short
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The Phoenix Police Department has fewer sworn officers than it did in 2024, despite renewed efforts to boost recruitment in order to close a years-long staffing gap.
Why it matters: The department's hiring and retention struggles — there are more than 500 unfilled sworn officer positions — come as the agency continues to battle bad headlines, including the arrest of two now-former officers following a violent traffic stop.
By the numbers: For the past several years, the city has authorized the department to employ 3,125 sworn officers, a mark it has not come close to reaching.
- As of July, Phoenix police had 2,467 sworn officers and 127 recruits in its academy.
- While recruits are up compared with 2024, the department had 60 more officers two years ago.
State of play: The department's main challenge is hiring at a rate that outpaces attrition, mostly due to retirements.
- Recruitment crashed in 2020, with attrition outpacing hiring through 2022.
- Hiring has rebounded since — in part thanks to pay boosts — but hasn't consistently reached pre-pandemic levels of between 250-350 new officers a year.
- Phoenix police hired 256 new officers last year but is on pace to fall short of that in 2026.
What they're saying: After a presentation touting the department's recruitment efforts during a City Council public safety committee meeting on Wednesday, Councilmember Jim Waring said: "We probably shouldn't try to make it sound positive" because "we're actually worse off than we were two years ago."
- Yes, but: The department's hiring freeze from 2008 to 2015, a result of the recession, "left a very big, huge gap" because retiring officers were not replaced, Vice Mayor Ann O'Brien tells Axios.
Context: The department's recruiting struggles have coincided with a years-long stretch of bad PR for Phoenix police and police in general.
- In 2020, Phoenix officers, working with the county attorney's office, arrested and falsely accused protesters as members of a made-up street gang.
- In 2024, the Department of Justice released a scathing report saying Phoenix police committed widespread constitutional violations. The Trump administration rescinded the report upon taking power.
- Last month, the department fired and arrested two officers suspected of conducting a violent, unreported traffic stop.
Police Cmdr. Warren Brewer told the subcommittee that incident isn't affecting recruitment.
- But Arizona Police Association executive director Joe Clure tells Axios that the public's negative reaction to the incident makes it harder to attract candidates — even if police chief Matt Giordano took swift and appropriate action, he adds.
- "Still they get criticized because of a 'lack of transparency, a lack of accountability,'" Clure says. "Officers listen to that and they go, 'What more do you want from us?'"
The bottom line: While there has been recent progress in recruitment, the department still has a big hill to climb to finally reach full staffing.