Fall River Police Department Boosts Patrol Ranks to Near 17-Year High

Like many law enforcement departments, recruiting and maintaining staffing levels has been a challenge for the Fall River Police Department for years.

The good news is that the trend may be reversing as the FRPD is increasing its complement of patrol officers, the likes of which haven’t been seen in the past 17 years.

In late May, 11 new officers were sworn in to the police department.

“That was a pretty big class, but we just trumped it,” said acting Police Chief J.D. Hoar.

On June 22, another thirteen candidates entered the academy in Plymouth.

“So that thirteen puts us at 177 patrol officers and detectives. Historically speaking, if you go back to the archives in 2009, we were at about 181 patrol officers,” said Hoar. “So, I’m four away from where we were in 2009.”

That number doesn’t include the approximately 35 to 40 superior officers in the department.

Hoar said the police department will surpass the 2009 numbers of patrol officers in August when he will hire another six candidates to go on to training at the academy.

Attrition problem

For the past few years, the department has been battling attrition, said Hoar, between retirements, resignations or candidates that changed their minds in either the academy or during their probation periods.

From 2022 to 2024, staffing levels began to trend downwards, with the retirements and resignation out pacing recruitment, according to Hoar. 

Some former city police officers left to pursue careers in other police departments.

In 2024, of the nine resignations, eight went to other departments.

But in 2025 with stepped up recruitment efforts, the police department was in a positive course correction with the hiring of 48 new officers.

It is the largest wave of new hires for the department. Back in the 1980’s there was a big push for hiring officers, but that was when there were a lot of federal dollars for public safety.

“I think the biggest thing that I’m trying to do is to get to a place where we can be above a full complement to absorb retirements and things like long-term sick leave, and not have it affect our day-to-day services,” said Hoar.

He said the department has been having to do more with less for some time.

New “FRPD University” initiative

Hiring new police officers is not like hiring a clerk at Target where a new staffer can start work the next day, said Hoar.

“You hire them, they have to go to the police academy and then through field training. It takes about nine months before they’re actually on the road, per se, like having a baby,” said Hoar. “They’re not fully functional at this point.”

Cognizant that the department has a lot of young and inexperienced officers right now, and are still learning the job, Hoar, now retired Chief Kelly Furtado and Captain William Platt decided to revise their field training program.

Now as young officers are graduating from the police academy, they are not immediately put out on the street in field training with an experienced partner. Rather they spend three to four weeks at FRPD University.

“We put them in a classroom environment, and we do a lot of things with our policies as it relates to the law, a lot of role playing and scenario-based training so they know how we do it in Fall River in a controlled environment,” said Hoar.

He said it helps the new officers understand the transactional things the police department does.

For example, trainers will create a mock breaking and entering scenario and role play the whole process from asking questions on scene to writing the report.

“They then send it to a supervisor who reviews it, so it gives them the feel of the chain of command and get feedback. We’re finding that by doing that we are checking a lot of transactional boxes,” Hoar said.

And candidates are also getting added support before they even enter the academy that addresses the required fitness test.

Perhaps a candidate can do the 1.5 mile run but they can’t meet the push-ups requirement. 

“We do a three day a week voluntary fitness training which not many other departments do,” said Hoar. “We used to lose about half the people from the academy’s fitness standard. Now we’re probably at a 90 percent success rate.”