The Chattanooga Police Department has been trying to boost its number of minority officers for the last few years, and during this year’s Jubilee Day, Chief David Roddy reminded the public of a recruitment incentive.
“If you have an individual you recruit to the Chattanooga Police Department, and they start the academy – not graduate – if they started the academy because you recruited them, we’ll give you $500,” Roddy said from the pulpit at the Greater Emmanuel Apostolic Church on Tuesday.
He was one of the speakers during the NAACP’s annual Jubilee Day celebration, a day that commemorates the anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves across the nation.
NAACP President Elenora Woods praised the police department’s efforts to diversify and told the audience the police department and the sheriff’s office share the same problem: a lack of minority applicants.
“[Roddy’s] doing a good job,” Woods said, but “we need to get more applicants so that we can improve the pool of the number of African Americans within the police department.”