Houston Mayor John Whitmire wants to see some legislative action take place to try and help with recruitment for the city police department.
Mayor Whitmire believes state lawmakers will end up backing legislation to lower the age requirement for police recruits to bear firearms. Action could be taken when the 89th Legislature convenes in Austin.
Currently, recruits must be 21 to be hired by the police department, which is also the legal age to carry a firearm in Texas.
Doug Griffith, President of the Houston Police Officers Union, said changes to gun laws years ago, which used to allow 18-year-olds to be hired because they could obtain a fireman, also ended up changing who could be hired onto the force.
"He (Whitmire) wants to get younger people into the police department," said Griffith. "His goal is to get a younger group of applicants."
Mayor Whitmire also recently appointed Noe Diaz as the new Police Chief. Diaz too wants there to be more of a focus on recruiting young people to join the police department. A legislative change would be needed to allow people just out of high school to bear firearms during their training at the police academy.
"We don't have enough manpower to do all the things that we need to do as a department," Griffith said.
The Houston Police Department has also been dealing with staffing shortages for quite some time. Griffith said the department is about 2,000 officers short of where they would like to be. HPD has lost hundreds of officers over the past few years and the city has gained hundreds of thousands more people.
"Officers are being vilified across the country for one incident and some people just don't like being on a camera every day," Griffith said about why it's been more difficult to recruit younger people to be officers.