Across the country, law enforcement agencies are battling a crisis that’s both operational and financial: chronic understaffing. While headlines often focus on crime rates or officer morale, the financial strain placed on local budgets is just as alarming.
When agencies can’t hire, they compensate with overtime. That short-term fix comes at a massive price. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is 23% understaffed and now spends nearly $500 million a year on overtime. In San Francisco, overtime costs have doubled in recent years to $72 million annually. Sacramento County spends over $60 million a year just to fill the beats.
Despite these staggering figures, most agencies continue to invest in traditional recruiting methods that fail to deliver results—expensive branding campaigns, recruitment bonuses and outdated HR systems that weren’t built for the realities of modern hiring.
A Smarter Investment: The SAFEGUARD Recruiting System
SAFEGUARD Recruiting was built by law enforcement and is a law enforcement-specific recruiting system designed for the demands facing public safety recruiting.
Rather than throwing money at short-term solutions that will affect the morale and readiness of your agency, SAFEGUARD delivers guaranteed hires that start at just $1,000 each. That’s not an estimate. It’s based on over 400 successful campaigns across agencies of all sizes.
Let’s do the math:
Spending $500,000 on overtime might keep a fatigued officer working a beat that isn’t theirs but that same investment would produce 500 hires, restoring staffing, reducing burnout, and eliminating the need for costly overtime in the first place.
We just spoke to an agency that is down 60 officers and they are spending 5 million dollars a year on overtime due to staffing. They could solve their staffing for $60,000…It’s that simple and we can prove it.
Real Results. Real Savings.
When the Asheville (NC) Police Department partnered with SAFEGUARD, they doubled their application rate and hired the largest academy class in years.
The Philadelphia Police Department receives over 1000 qualified candidates a month from our proven system and they continue to exceed their hiring goals.
And we have dozens of other agency partners we are staffing full right now!
The Bottom Line
Hiring the right officers isn’t just a public safety issue. It’s a fiscal responsibility issue. Every month an agency goes unstaffed is a month of wasted dollars, mounting overtime, and overworked officers.
SAFEGUARD Recruiting doesn’t just fill positions—it fills them efficiently, affordably, and predictably.
Visit safeguardrecruiting.com for a free consultation and start your journey to a fully staffed agency.
