Saying it could help alleviate a shortage in the law enforcement ranks, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is introducing legislation meant to help police officers secure child care.
During a visit to Albany, Gillibrand said the Providing Child Care for Police Officers Act would help increase public safety by reducing barriers to a career in law enforcement. She says officers are often working extended hours on nontraditional schedules that can make finding child care difficult. The Albany Police Department currently has 74 vacancies.
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan is a member of Gillibrand's Child Care Working Group. "One of the areas where we have a real hard time with recruitment is recruiting police officers, it continues to be a challenge. And the hours that police officers work, the unpredictability of their schedule, makes it really challenging, and to help create an opportunity for us to ensure that those who are protecting us, those who are running into danger when we're running away from danger, have barriers broken down for them to access childcare, is just so important,” Sheehan said.
Gillibrand, a fellow Democrat, says since before the pandemic, the city of Albany and other police departments across New York state have faced unprecedented staffing shortages. “While you've made enormous progress in bringing in the new recruits, there's more work to be done. One way to attract more talent is to offer better access to affordable and high quality childcare. Recent surveys show that nearly 20% of police officers are seeking to leave the profession, and at one major metropolitan police department, more than half of the officers reported having to leave or miss work due to child care issues. It's an issue that disproportionately impacts our women, who make up about 12% of officers and 3% of police leadership. Offering childcare is a powerful recruitment and retention tool,” said Gillibrand.
Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins noted "...we're having some challenges with recruitment and retention. And this is an important initiative that helped us to address some of those challenges."
Gillibrand says the measure would provide $24 million in annual federal funding for the next five years. “It would provide grants to these departments that they could either use to build their own facilities or to contract with existing facilities to meet the hours and needs that they have. 20% of total funding is dedicated to forces employing fewer than 200 officers to assist agencies that may be smaller or located in rural areas,” Gillibrand said.
Jessica Klos Shapiro is the Senior Director of Policy and Community Education at the Early Care & Learning Council. “The New York State Department of Labor reported that center-based care is at nearly $22,000 annually, which is 155% higher than annual in-state tuition at SUNY schools, four-year schools. So cost and availability are major barriers for any person searching for childcare. But the unique needs of the police officers require that non-traditional hours makes it even more challenging. The provisions in this bill just makes sense. We've seen them work in other sectors, such as the military, who assists with higher quality child care, because they've found that it affects mission readiness, morale and retention of defense personnel,” Shapiro said.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina cosponsors the bill and Democratic Congressman Scott Peters of California is carrying it in the House.
