City of Tucson Launches Innovative New Initiative
to Address Public Safety Recruitment Challenges
The City of Tucson is rolling out a new communications initiative under a unified Public Safety team aimed at attracting an increasingly diverse pool of applicants to join the ranks of the Police, Fire, and Public Safety Communications Departments.
The goal of the initiative is to not only generate more interest from a wider applicant pool through innovative public messages and creative advertisements, but to call on members of the community to consider who amongst family, friends and neighbors they want to answer the call in times of crisis.
Overcoming a Challenging Landscape
The initiative is designed to attract a more diverse racial, cultural, and gender makeup within the City's Public Safety Departments, one that will better mirror the community that they serve. The City hopes to garner the attention of well qualified people who might not have traditionally considered public service as a career path.
In recent years, a number of high profile incidents of malfeasance in public safety departments across the country have justly generated negative media coverage and public scrutiny of these roles, most notably in policing.
“These types of conversations are important and necessary,” said Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar. “While I want Tucson to always be judged for our own actions and not those of other departments in other cities, I also understand it is on us to continue to build trust. Part of that is having a team that best reflects the makeup of the community we serve.”
Public safety departments across the country are experiencing recruiting challenges, a problem many researchers attribute, in part, to negative perceptions.
“Young people are often struggling to see themselves in these roles because their perception is informed by the extremes they see in the media – either the misconduct or crimes committed by those who bring shame to the profession, or the representation of Hollywood action stars and over-the-top crime dramas that just aren’t real life,” Chief Kasmar said reflecting on the insights that guided the strategy.
For this reason, a new storytelling approach focuses on showing diverse Tucsonans in relatable situations. None of the characters are wearing a uniform and the initiative media carefully avoids tropes associated with how these roles are unrealistically represented by Hollywood.
“The challenge we are overcoming is getting diverse, compassionate people from within our community to actually see themselves as capable of filling these shoes,” said Public Safety Communications Director Sharon McDonough. “There are so many people in our community who would be well suited to these roles, they just haven’t considered them. Showing the job from a more relatable, realistic stance allows us to engage with potential candidates outside of the stereotype that Hollywood and the media have long portrayed."
A Coordinated Focus on What Matters Most
Taking a unified approach to this initiative – combining the recruiting efforts of Police, Fire and 911 – was a choice made collectively by the department leads in coordination with Human Resources and the City Manager’s office.
“Part of what makes us strong is how well our three departments coordinate,” said Tucson Fire Chief Chuck Ryan. “While there might be differences in roles, such as fitness requirements or level of training, there are fundamental key attributes we are all seeking in our staffs, most notably: calm under stress, a servant’s heart, and pride in what we do.”
While each department will still have their own individual recruiting approaches, the broader public messages are designed to help generate awareness and interest across the community in public safety careers as a whole.
“As people engage with the initiative, they get a chance to compare and contrast roles across the three departments and decide what’s best for them,” Chief Ryan said. “What’s important is that we are leading with a clear message about the type of people we want to answer the call when our neighbors need help.”
While many recruiting initiatives across the country often pursue prospective candidates from out-of-market, this initiative is intentionally focused on people who live and work in the Tucson metropolitan area as an appeal to “serve the community you call home.”
Taking a Creative Storytelling Approach
To develop the initiative, the team conducted a number of community interviews and reviewed much of the available academic papers on the topic including an open dialogue with one of the top public safety reform researchers in the country.
All of this foundational work led to an idea anchored by a novel slogan: We don’t need a hero. We need you. And the decision to use story-driven creative tactics to bring it to life.
The initiative will be anchored by two video commercial spots and will also include a postering campaign across the community, social media and search advertisements, and coordinated messaging and community conversations from Public Safety representatives. In addition, a new recruiting microsite, https://publicsafety.tucsonaz.gov, has been developed for people who are interested in learning more.
Get Involved
The City of Tucson hopes members of the community will step up and amplify the message. All of us know people who would be great in these roles. Encourage them. Take a look yourself, one of these careers might be exactly what you didn’t know you were looking for.
Business owners and other community partners can volunteer to have one of the campaign posters hung in their window. To learn more, visit https://bit.ly/tps-posters
Visit the Public Safety recruitment site and forward it on to anybody who might be a great candidate. Visit https://publicsafety.tucsonaz.gov
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