MASON CITY — This is National Police Week, and the Mason City Police Department continues to have challenges getting to a full staff.

Police Chief Jeff Brinkley says recruitment of new officers continues to be an ongoing issue. “We are eight down at the moment. We expect to be down a couple of more here in the next couple of months with a pending retirement and probably an officer who is heading out of state. We have six people that we are currently doing background on that we tested on May 6th. They are in background investigation right now. We’ll push them through, get them lined up for polygraphs, psychologicals, and physicals after that process as long as they get through. That would put us with a hire date we hope sometime between the middle of July and the first of August right now.”

Brinkley says once they have completed the process with these six candidates, they’ll start the process over with trying to find others who want to serve at the police department.  “There are some provisions in civil service right now to keep a continuous list. There’s pros and cons to that. We’re also looking at changing a little bit with our recruiting attempts and efforts, so we’re going to keep trying to get better every time out.”

Brinkley made his comments during this week’s meeting of the Mason City City Council.