Red Tape Frustrates Wymore’s Attempts To Hire New Police Officers
By Gordon Hopkins
Recent meetings of the Wymore City Council highlighted the difficulties of finding, hiring and retaining law enforcement officers. The city has a single applicant under consideration, but certification requirements make the process long and arduous.
The City of Wymore has been without a police department since June of 2024, when Wymore Police Chief Bobby Martinez submitted his resignation just 10 months after he started on the job. Chief Martinez was the city’s only law enforcement officer, although he had been attempting to hire more.
In his resignation letter, Martinez wrote, “One of the most daunting challenges has been recruiting quality candidates to join our police department. Despite my best efforts, the task of finding individuals who are both qualified and willing to serve in our small community has been exceedingly difficult. I acknowledge that I underestimated the complexities and obstacles associated with this recruitment process, which has only added to the burden of my responsibilities.”
At a meeting on Wednesday, March 4, Wymore City Attorney Andrew Carothers gave the city council an update on the candidate, “We had talked about moving forward with him attempting to gain certification through the reciprocity process. That process is foreclosed to him right now, and the reason is because, under Nebraska Academy rules and regulations, he has not been a full-time law enforcement officer for two of the last four years, and he needs to have that requirement to be able to qualify for certification through reciprocity.”
Carothers explained that the candidate has been a jailer during much of that time, “Nebraska does not consider correctional staff full time law enforcement officers.”
“And the basis for that is, that they don’t normally have the independent authority to arrest even though they carry a firearm,” added Carothers.
As a result, the candidate will have to go through the regular certification process, meaning 15 weeks of training at the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center. Carothers believes the city will have to hire the candidate before he goes through the academy, “And my understanding is, if you’re going to go through and be certified, they want to have a contract.”
The city would have to hire the candidate as a non-certified conditional officer.
However, there is no guarantee that the candidate would be accepted into the academy. Mark Meints, who is acting police chief, explained, “The investigation would have to be completed first before we offered him the conditional officer (position). So, that’s what’s confusing right now to us.”
Meints expressed frustration in dealing with the academy, “I’m telling you, it’s back and forth with the academy, when you talk to them, and then they change something.”
At the following meeting on Wednesday, March 18, Councilperson Max Allen noted the city has not had a lot of qualified applicants for the police department, “The list of names is very short.”
Councilperson Neil VanBoening, who also serves on the Police Department Advisory Committee, suggested the city consider hiring an employment agency to help recruit candidates.
