Alabama Law Enforcement Agency having difficulty hiring qualified State Troopers

Wednesday, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency presented their 2020 budget request to a joint meeting of the Legislature’s budget committees. ALEA Secretary Hal Taylor said that hiring more officers is his primary goal.

Taylor said that finding qualified candidates who can pass the drug testing and screening process has become difficult. Taylor said he planned to backfill vacancies by bringing back some retired officers. ALEA has 732 sworn personnel in all their agencies, but Taylor warned that 213 of those were projected to retire within five years and 68 anticipated in the next year.

Taylor said that ALEA currently only has 370 officers on the road, but that it does have a new class of troopers being trained now. Twenty-three are expected to graduate and be on the road in March.

Taylor said that his eventual goal was to have 670 officers on the road. That would be enough to have an officer on the road in every county 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year. Currently, there are times where one trooper is patrolling three counties.

Read more: https://www.alreporter.com/2019/02/04/alea-having-difficulty-hiring-qualified-state-troopers/