Cincinnati officials plan to seek a small federal grant to pay for a van police can use to send their recruiters on the road, especially to reach more minority candidates.

        City Manager Valerie Lemmie is on the agenda to ask Council this week for permission to apply for and accept a $75,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. It will be used to buy the van and for other support of a “Creating a Culture of Integrity” program aimed at “recruiting quality candidates from local communities” and outreach to minority youth.

        The force is about 29 percent black now. A federal court decree mandates that recruit classes be 34 percent African American.

        “We want to do off-site testing, so you don't have to come to us anymore, so we can go out to various schools,” said Lt. Dan Gerard of the department's fiscal and budget section. “In this technological age, we have to be more user-friendly.”

        The grant is the latest of several changes in how the Cincinnati Police Department recruits. In July, a new three-officer team was formed to do nothing but recruiting. Previously, the recruiting unit also had to do background checks on all departmental hires, which can take a lot of time, said Ted Schoch, director of the police academy.

        Now, the new recruiters unit will be more aggressive, he said, and “attach themselves” to possible recruits to see that the good ones stay in the pipeline during the months-long period between taking the police exam and possibly making it into a recruit class. The recruiters started by sending letters to all criminal justice students at Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati, asking them to consider becoming Cincinnati officers.

        Also new this year: more recruit exams. Two this fall, Sept. 28 and Oct. 26, likely will be followed by a third, given somewhere in the South. And signing up is easier too - recruits can do it at any of the five police districts and on the department's Web site, www.cincinnatipolice.org.

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