KPD chief talks officer retention, crime analytic with Herald

Killeen Daily Herald
By Kevin Limiti | Herald
December, 21, 2023

The Killeen Police Department’s Chief of Police Pete Lopez Jr. sat down with the Herald for an interview Thursday where he talked about a number of topics, including retention of police officers

He said KPD is considered a medium-sized agency despite being a big department.

According to Lopez and department spokesperson Ofelia Miramontez, KPD has 265 authorized sworn officer positions with 31 vacancies. Those vacant positions will drop to 17 once KPD starts a new police academy class next month, Lopez said.

Keeping a department that size fully staffed is always a challenge due to retirements and a host of other reasons.

“So a lot of these young officers, they want to do SWAT full-time, do air support, do bomb,” Lopez said, providing examples of why some officers may leave KPD and go elsewhere. “We don’t have those opportunities here. So they go to other agencies.”

He said KPD recently had an officer go to Arlington because he wanted to be on homicide. KPD has a part-time SWAT team, but other Texas cities such as Dallas and Houston have full-time SWAT teams.

Other officers leave for family reasons or they can retire earlier because of their military history.

“That’s not common in other agencies,” Lopez said. “People want to go back to their hometown, right? So we’ve got to find innovative ways to keep them.”

Some of the ways KPD attempts to mitigate the issue of retention is by incentivizing officers to stay in a variety of ways.

“We’ve got to create opportunities internally for officers who want to be a patrol officer but want to have homicide experience,” Lopez said. “So we tried to implement a program this year where they do a 90-day rotation in ‘homicide robbery’ so they can get that experience to keep them interested in the department.”

But he said he is most concerned about losing officers who have two- to five-years worth of experience.

One of the things they do to try to keep those officers is provide incentives where they could work in Bell County and other nearby counties.

He also said they use a company called RollKall, a technology platform that allows off-duty officers to make extra cash working security at retail stores, school or events both in Bell County and surrounding counties.

Some of those places, Lopez said, pay upwards of $50 an hour.

“The past policies, they only work in Killeen,” Lopez said. “So they didn’t have a lot of opportunities to make money. So, yeah, that’s going to increase morale, keep them here and it doesn’t cost the city.”

KPD officers in their first year get paid $32.21 per hour, according to the 2024 budget, which is a 7% increase from the 2023 budget, in which they received $30.10 per hour.

That increase in pay comes to an annual salary $66,997.63 a year.

This doesn’t include incentives, which include a KPD hiring bonus of $15,000, pay for education and TCOLE certification pay.

Temple pays $72,000 for police officers in their first year, but Lopez said the amount of pay increases quicker for KPD officers, who can earn “max pay” in five years.

CRIME ANALYTICS

Lopez’s biggest overall goal as police chief is to reduce violent crime by identifying where it is taking place and allocating officers.

“We have too much deadly conduct cases, people just shooting guns for no reason, aggravated assaults,” Lopez said. “So in August, we started a new crime initiative where we’re looking at the data that we have … I can use that to determine how much resources are needed versus specific like Fourth of July parade, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day … What I look at as chief is the last 30, 60, 90 days, because that gives me analysis of what’s going on in the community trends or whatever.”

He said a lot of the violent crime recently is concentrated in the Nolan and Long Branch areas.

“In the last 28 days, crime of aggravated assault, down 50%; deadly conduct, 88%; (burglary of motor vehicles), 26%,” Lopez said, listing how crime went down recently according to KPD’s data.

He said the vehicle thefts are “still killing us.”

KIAs and Hyundais — nationwide and in Killeen — have been a target of a TikTok challenge showing how easy some of them can be stolen.

“We’re doing our best to educate the people. That’s why you’ve been seeing a lot more information about vehicle thefts, lock them up and secure and put them in the garage. Take the guns out, sell your KIA,” he said jokingly.