For years, Prince George’s County, Maryland, has been short dozens of crossing guards to help kids walk to school safely. Even now, county leaders said only about half their routes are filled, and they need to hire almost 30 more just to feel comfortable about where things stand.
While hiring hasn’t been easy, Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz told a county council committee he’s hoping to make it easier going forward. This week, the minimum standards have been relaxed a bit.
“We’re going to reduce that age from 21 years old to 18,” Aziz told the council. “There was a driver’s license requirement. We are going to relax that and look at that on a case-by-case basis. So, we’ve removed some of these obstacles that have caused some of the people to not to apply to walk our kids across the street.”
Currently, members of the chief’s command staff, all the way up to assistant and deputy chiefs, have been manning some intersections trying to help out. They’ve posted job openings online and reached out to churches. Municipal police departments in the county and even volunteers are also being utilized.
But even before the November crash that killed two students while they were walking to school, the department would get hundreds of applications for what are just a few dozen openings. And yet, the openings persisted.
“We had 527 people who filled out applications long before this incident had happened,” Aziz said.
He added that “220 some odd people actually answered the call after filling out an application. And then the scheduling of interviews, less than 30 actually scheduled … so those numbers sound astounding, right? This many people will fill out an application. Many of those use the system to say they are applying for a job. They have no intention of coming and joining us.”
But lately, Aziz seems to think the efforts have been paying off. Interview panels are ramping up this month, but even still, he expects this initial push to fill about 10 of the openings. On top of all the other struggles, he said too many people can’t pass the drug test.
When pushed on whether that was an unnecessary barrier in an age of legal cannabis, Aziz noted that it comes down to testing and liability. Right now, it’s hard to determine whether the cannabis in someone’s system is from two weeks ago or two hours ago.
“We have no way of testing that,” Aziz said. “Whether they used it just before or they used it 30 days ago, there’s nothing that exists in the United States.”
After the meeting, the chief agreed to send a list of the intersections they’re still looking to fill to members of the council sorted out by district, so they can also reach out to potential volunteers or others who might be interested.
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