ATLANTA — Atlanta police are doing away with a program that helped keep the department staffed.
Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said in 2015, APD started bringing back retired officers on contract for their experience and specific talents, and as the years went on, the department lost too many officers.
The program helped fill a big need, but now the department is growing, and the same need is no longer there.
“The department is growing, and the need that was present in 2015, the need was present in 2020, Mark just doesn’t exist today. And so, this was an appropriate move,” Shierbaum told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne in an exclusive interview on Tuesday.
Schierbaum said the officers who have been part of the program intercepted major drug shipments at the airport, captured fugitives, and performed other critical jobs within the department.
They are called “recaptures,” officers who retired from APD with full pensions and have come back to work for the department on contract, also drawing a salary, and when the department was losing officers, they provided important manpower.
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“This started back in 2015 under Chief George Turner. The initial desire was to retain certain talent,” Schierbaum said.
But now the program is being phased out.
“It was very apparent that we could roll it back without any negative impact of the safety of Atlanta,” Schierbaum said.
The chief told Winne there are two big reasons for the recapture phaseout: one is the budget. The mayor asked APD, like other departments, to identify 5% of the budget to cut without undermining the basic mission.
“It was very important to the mayor that we not in any way sacrifice the respective missions of all the departments,” Schierbaum said.
But the chief said more importantly, the staffing shortage that kept the recapture program vital for years has reversed.
“We have almost 1,750 personnel on our sworn side,” Schierbaum said. “I asked the team to go back and look, when was the last time we were above 1,700 officers? And that was in 2021.”
APD said hiring of sworn police officers by APD increased 34% for the first quarter of 2025, and a new recruit class is starting at the academy every month for the next six months.
“Our authorized strength is 2,050 officers,” Schierbaum said.
“When will you hit that?” Winne asked Schierbaum.
“Well, if we keep our current trajectory, both of our attrition and our hiring numbers, we anticipate hitting that in 2027,” Schierbaum said.
The chief said so far in 2025, APD has 189 total recruits, 97 currently in training, and 86 recruits working for the police department not performing police duties, waiting to enter the police academy, plus five lateral transfers from other police departments and one rehired officer.
“I chose the APD because I want to protect, to serve, and seeing the cops in the community kind of enticed my excitement to want to join the agency,” recruit Kenyante Bush said.
The chief said 66 recapture officers are losing their jobs in three phases. In April, 25 employees were cut, saving $2.2 million. In October 2025 and April of next year, the rest of the 66 will lose their jobs, for a total savings of $5.6 million.
The chief said the Atlanta Police Airport Interdiction unit, which in March recovered approximately 36 pounds of methamphetamine and 4.6 pounds of fentanyl in one bust, but lost five recapture officers in phase one, including two canine officers.
“We have canine officers in training as we speak,” Schierbaum said.
He said over the next year, each of the affected units will be built back up.
“The citizens of Atlanta should never worry about an exit of talent as we add talent to the organization,” Schierbaum said.
Schierbaum told Winne that he appreciates very the important contributions of the recapture officers, and many of them are still going to have an APD gun and badge as they take part in the Atlanta Police Retired Reserve -- helping especially at big events like parades and the Peachtree Road Race, and the upcoming FIFA World Cup.