Police recruiting in the Denver metro area is a tale of two cities. As national recruitment has declined, two of Colorado’s largest departments, Denver and Aurora Police, have taken radically different approaches to combat the lack of incoming recruits, with dramatically different results.
The FBI reports that police recruitment is down as much as 60% nationally, and the Denver Police Department is feeling the effects. In 2024, Mayor Mike Johnston’s goal of adding 167 new officers fell far short, as only 55 were added to the unit last year.
Gracie Perez, executive director of Denver’s Civil Service Commission, is tasked with the difficult job of heading the Denver Police Department’s recruitment efforts. So far in 2025, Perez reports some progress, but there’s still more work to be done.
“In 2025, we are going to do three police academies,” Perez said. “One in April, one in July and one between October and November. [As of February 4], we have received 1227 applications and made 26 conditional offers. It’s too early to speak on what the outcome will be, but we are looking pretty positive and optimistic towards enrollment.”
Bucket List contacted the Denver Police several times to inquire about recruitment efforts and to clarify why so few people were hired in the department’s most recent application process, but received no response aside from being directed to Denver’s Civil Service Commission.
One of Denver’s biggest problems with finding new police recruits has been the time it takes to process applications. It takes nearly half a year for recruits to find out if they get a job offer, which was one reason Perez attributed to the department’s struggles to bring in new prospects.
“One of the things that we found is that our processing time was anywhere between four to six months,” Perez said. “That was kind of our sweet spot. So, from the time somebody applies, it could take anywhere between four to six months before they find out whether or not they get an offer.”
The biggest change that Denver’s recruiting unit has made to help simplify the process is implementing a brand new, Denver-specific written test with streamlined elements.
“We used to have a four-hour written test all our candidates need to go through,” Perez said. “It’s a test that nearly everyone in the nation utilizes. We have worked with [the test makers] to implement a Denver-specific test. We’ve reduced the test components and really specified on the skills we want to measure at that front gate.”
Other than changes made to the written test, the Denver Police Department has only made modest changes to its recruitment process. Although they’ve streamlined the process in some aspects, they’re intentionally keeping the process somewhat difficult. To Perez, this helps to ensure the highest quality of the officers being brought in to serve.
“The process [of enrollment] by itself is arduous, right?” Perez said. “It’s intended to be intense because we want to make sure the best of the best come through here.”
With that in mind, the Denver Police Department has turned its recruiting strategy to offering more effective communication to its applicants and potential recruits without easing any of the actual recruiting process.
“[We are] focusing on candidate experience and really trying to understand what our candidates’ needs are,” Perez said. “Not to relax any of our processes, but just to ensure that we’re in alignment.”
Located directly west, the Aurora Police Department hasn’t shared Denver’s struggles when it comes to police recruiting. Instead, they’ve bucked the trend in 2024 and brought in their biggest police class in years.
With the help of Officer Art Zepeda of the Aurora Police Department’s recruiting and background unit, the bump in recruiting numbers has been no coincidence. Aurora’s police recruiting team has been thinking outside of the box to bring in new recruits and it’s been paying off.
“We like to hit a lot of community events and even places you wouldn’t think might be an opportunity to recruit,” Zepeda said. “We’ll go to different community events like Cinco de Mayo, Juneteenth, Colorado’s Black Arts festivals and stuff like that. We like to get in front of diverse groups and let them know we’re hiring.”
Tapping into diverse groups not only increases recruiting numbers, but it also provides Aurora with a diverse police force that reflects the city’s population, which Zepeda recognizes.
“In terms of diversity, we try to reflect what our community looks like,” Zepeda said. “So that’s what we’re doing now with the different events we attend.”
As for the Aurora Police Department’s recruiting process itself, Zepeda and the recruiting staff have made multiple sweeping changes to ease the recruitment process for potential applicants. Using statistics, the department has identified some of the biggest hurdles to completing the police academy and have tweaked the process to address them.
The biggest and most effective change implemented by the Aurora Police Department is drastically expanding its line of communication to potential applicants. In today’s age of online job lists and applications, it’s exceedingly common for people to fill out applications on a whim and completely forget about them. Zepeda and the recruiting staff have targeted that demographic, letting them know that they’re there to help them move forward with the recruiting process.
“Now that we’re stat-driven, we’ve noticed that there’s a small amount of applicants that we call ‘unresponsive’,” Zepeda said. “That means that they’ll submit an application and that’s kind of it. So what we’ve started doing as a recruiting team is contacting those folks directly, one-on-one, just to let them know that we’re here for them with whatever they need.”
Another hurdle to becoming a police officer has been the price of entry. In most cities, applicants have to pay for their own written tests at the police academy, which would set them back around $65. Aurora Police Department recognized the potential barrier of entry and has since been covering the fee for the test, making it more accessible.
“Now, we pay for that,” Zepeda said. “Prior to December 2024, that was paid by the applicant, which was a pretty decent $65 charge. That is all now being covered by the department and when we communicated that to our unresponsive applicants, we saw an increase in responsiveness and tests scheduled.”
Additionally, the Aurora Police Department has been offering “physical fitness seminars” for applicants before their fitness testing. If applicants do well enough in those seminars, the police department allows them to count it as a passed test without the pressure or consequences of failing.
“[The physical fitness seminars] give an applicant an opportunity to come in and take the test,” Zepeda said. “If they happen to do well and pass the test, it will count towards the application process and move them forward into the next phase. If they happen to fail that test at a seminar there, it’s not counted against them, and they’re given an opportunity at a future seminar that we’ll host.”
Despite an overall easing in the recruitment process, Zepeda and the Aurora Police Department don’t share Perez’s concern about the potential drop in the quality of recruits. Aurora has combated those concerns by holding a 26-week curriculum at the police academy, despite only being required to have a 13-week curriculum by law. Additionally, Zepeda and his staff are open with recruits about the difficulties of the academy.
“We are upfront and transparent about [the recruitment process],” Zepeda said. “There’s a lot of learning involved, physically and obviously classroom stuff where they’ll have to come in. It’ll be intense, so we’re very transparent about a lot of that stuff. We don’t really ease up any restrictions, so to speak, we just try to guide them in the right direction and just being very transparent about what they need to prepare for.”
After finding success in recruiting in 2024, the Aurora Police Department has no intention of slowing its efforts.
“Any opportunity to recruit, we’ll take,” Zepeda said. “We’ll continue our efforts in-state in terms of different job fairs, community events, and even hosting our own events, like fitness seminars and things of that nature.”
Denver and Perez will continue to address recruitment issues and evaluate internal processes in order to combat crime in the city.
“The Denver Civil Service Commission is definitely committed to helping our public safety area get the positions or the manpower they need in order to keep the community safe,” Perez said. “For us, it’s looking at a deep dive of our processes, internal procedures and rules. I think our rules are where they need to be, but looking at our efficiencies is how I think 2025 is going to help us gain better enrollment.”
