At Santa Rosa Junior College's police academy, back-to-school shopping comes at a far steeper price than for most SRJC students.
Just getting geared up with boots, uniforms, gun belt, pistol and other essentials can set cadets back more than $2,000, and that's in addition to the $2,700 tuition for the intensive 20-week course.
In flusher times, such costs weren't much of an obstacle because most of the aspiring officers were paid trainees sent by the agency that hired them and which covered their costs.
But the first day of class Monday underscored how much that reality has changed. Of the 29 cadets standing in formation while instructors barked about the shine on their shoes, just two had jobs.
Others are doubling down on their desire to be law enforcement agents, betting that the time and costs of the academy will pay off despite the bleak hiring outlook.
"I wanted to do something that would make me more competitive," said Blaine Watermann, 23, of Windsor.
In recent years, Watermann would have been a highly attractive entry-level candidate. A linguistics and Russian double-major at UC Santa Barbara, he fell in love with law enforcement and with helping people while working as a community service officer with his university's police department.
But after graduating and approaching numerous agencies, he found they were either not hiring or were limiting consideration to qualified officers from other departments. Going to the academy now is a way to up his appeal to departments that won't have to pay for him to go later, he said.
"It's an employers' market right now," said Tom Schwedhelm, chief of the Santa Rosa Police Department, which lately has been hiring solely experienced officers. "It's a much more efficient way of getting quality employees."
The tough hiring climate has affected enrollment at the academy, which cut its spring session to go with just two cohorts this year. Even then, Monday's academy was 37 percent smaller than the class that started in July 2008 with 46 cadets.
Still, plenty of students are eager to take a chance in pursuit of a new career. Charles Dagit left a job as an elementary physical education teacher in Marin County to attend the academy, saying he feels called to give back to his community through law enforcement.
"I feel confident with my education and prior employment background that I can and will succeed," the 29-year-old said.
But success, at least locally, is not assured. Lorenzo Due?s, assistant Sonoma County sheriff, said six recent graduates of the academy have joined the sheriff's office as unpaid reserve deputies to keep their training up while waiting for paid work.
In prior years, reserves were almost exclusively older people interested in law enforcement but with no plans to make it a job, he said.
Jerry Schoenstein, the academy's director, said instructors don't sugarcoat the realities around the job search. But as long as graduates are willing to travel, they should find work.
"If someone is looking for a job at the end of this program, they better be looking in areas with more jobs," he said. "And that means Southern California."
Closer to home jobs are scarce. The Petaluma Police Department, for example, hasn't hired an officer in three years, as departing officers go unreplaced for budgetary reasons, said Capt. Dan Fish, the department's acting chief.
Still, Fish, who like Schwedhelm, Due?s and Schoenstein is a graduate of SRJC's academy, said he would encourage someone interested in law enforcement to enroll at the academy. In the long run, it's only going to help them provided they are willing to travel for an entry-level job.
"If history repeats itself, five years from now, we might be in a growth mode," he said. "The people who get in now anywhere they can will have the option to move back or change jobs down the road."
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