Houston Mayor John Whitmire wants to tap into a younger audience for police recruits, but doing so may require going to Austin and changing state law.
During a news conference introducing new Police Chief Noe Diaz, the mayor said he is in talks with lawmakers to try to see what he could do to get younger cadets for the Houston Police Department as a means of addressing its officer shortage, but the trouble with that was that the current law on the books doesn’t allow those younger than 21 to carry a weapon. He said he wanted to explore ways to introduce younger candidates with proper safeguards, training and background checks.
“Let’s grab them while they’re fired up, give them a mentor and get an HPD career started younger,” the mayor said Friday, adding that the city could seek to gain officers from the local community colleges too.
In a text to the Chronicle, Whitmire clarified he wanted to lower the age to carry under “special circumstances,” particularly as a recruiting and training tool for those who want to be HPD officers before they turn 21. He said the law, if changed, would strictly apply only to police officer cadets in order to be trained as HPD officers.
HPD’s own rules dictate officers can’t be younger than 20 and ½, because they have to be older than 21 upon graduation from the police academy. New HPD recruits also must have either gotten 48 semester hours in college, 18 months of active duty military service, three years of full-time peace officer employment or 36 months of full-time employment anywhere.
