In August, Ogden City sent out a press release detailing recent successes in attracting law enforcement professionals from across the country to help fill the department’s ranks.

“As police departments across Utah compete for officers through rapidly rising wages, the Ogden Police Department is taking a more strategic path that benefits not just officers but the entire community,” the release said. “Ogden Police is attracting and retaining top-tier talent by offering competitive pay and prioritizing a healthy, high-performance culture known as The Ogden Way. This culture means more fully staffed patrols, faster response times, and stronger community relationships. At its core, The Ogden Way is about building a team where officers feel supported, empowered, and accountable because when officers thrive, the whole city becomes safer, stronger, and more connected.”

John Thomas, training and recruitment coordinator for the Ogden City Police Department, told the Standard-Examiner that this success didn’t happen overnight.

“Back in, I’d say, November 2020, I was contacted by the former training lieutenant, Clint Christensen,” Thomas said. “He proposed a part-time position to me to do recruitment for the police department. At that time, I believe our numbers were right around 135 officers and we were allocated 145, so we were down 10 officers at this time.”

Coming a year after he’d retired from the department, Thomas opted to return in January 2021 to help with the recruiting situation.

“I steadily built the program up where we do recruitment fairs; I go to recruitment fairs throughout the area,” he said. “We did a campaign where we put an advertisement on UTA buses, all in an effort to get he word out that Ogden was hiring.”

He said that manpower in the department steadily began to increase to the point it is today — 153 officers, leaving the department fully staffed with more officers set to be sworn in later in the month.

However, Capt. Timothy Scott told the Standard-Examiner that these successes haven’t come about from career fairs and strategically placed advertising alone — they’re also the result of building a positive and supportive culture within and surrounding the department.

“In Ogden City, the culture starts at the mayor’s office,” he said. “We have a supportive mayor, City Council and city administration for law enforcement in Ogden City, and it’s not often that you find that in other agencies. Other agencies — the officers may find themselves less supported. Having that support from the top down and the administrative support of our officers with the chief of police and deputy chief of police — we foster that culture here. We like to consider that unique. … We feel that’s a draw for lateral applicants.”

Highlighting just how fast Ogden has been attracting officers, the August press release noted that 14 officers have made lateral moves from other law enforcement agencies to the Ogden City Police Department over the past year. Thomas said, as of Monday, that number was approaching 20, with Scott noting they average around nine years of experience.

“We’re getting that it’s not just wages and benefits; the draw a lot of times is culture,” Scott said. “What is the culture of the police department? What’s the drive of the police department? The professionalism of the police department?”

He said another aspect includes administering a training program for all sworn officers with hundreds of hours of training each year.

“A lot of times, agencies just don’t see that proper training for officers,” he said.

Thomas said the department has often been ahead of others in its offerings for training opportunities, citing a recent example.

“About nine months ago, a chief at an agency down in the Salt Lake valley was on the news and he was bragging to the reporter that he’s now teaching officers jiu jitsu,” he said. “Focus on Ogden — we’ve been doing that for over 20 years, as well as boxing and several other things. We seem to lead in some of the training aspects that are out there in law enforcement.”

He said this has also extended into training technologies utilized by the department. One piece includes a virtues simulator — a video game-like simulator program that allows officers to practice de-escalation tactics and other scenarios — that Thomas said, to his knowledge, is only utilized in the state by the Ogden City Police Department and the Utah Attorney General’s Office. Scott said the department is also in the process of acquiring VR headsets for further virtual training opportunities.

Scott said the department also takes its peer support program, which the department has maintained since 2020, very seriously.

“A lot of the feedback that we get from the officers is it’s not just a checked box to say that we have peer support; we have the best peer support, probably in the region,” he said. ‘There’s no other agency that does peer support as well as we do when it comes to critical incidents and some of the things the officers have to deal with in the field. That level of support often times will draw people in. We just had an interview with a lateral applicant that hasn’t onboarded yet, but that was his reason for coming here  — the peer support program that we have here in Ogden.”

Among those lateral hires that have recently come to the Ogden City Police Department is Patrolman Ben Jensen. During his 23 years of law enforcement experience, he previously served with Ogden from 2003-2007 before leaving for other agencies. Following a year in retirement, he rejoined the department in January.

“Ogden, back when I first started, was a rough town,” he said. “I saw, over the years, how things started getting cleaned up, especially in these last few years.”

He said that he was also drawn in again by the support city leaders were showing for the department.

“I loved what the mayor has been putting out,” he said. “I had a lot of respect for Chief Sube. When he became chief, I approached him and spoke with him, learning how much the mayor supports the police department. Also, when you hear him talk, he talks about the Constitution and how the city is very fundamental with the Constitution of the United States and he wants the citizens to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and to be aggressive towards crime so those citizens can enjoy that. Chief Sube was completely onboard with that type of philosophy and it shows, the crime rate of the city has been going down. When I showed back up here and got back on the road and saw it for my own eyes — not just hearing about it — I realized all of that’s working and I want to be a part of it.”

Det. Ryan Call moved to Ogden in June 2024 and has nearly 14 years of experience in law enforcement.

He told the Standard-Examiner there was something very unique about the leadership at the Ogden City Police Department.

“What is really solidifying that it was a great choice to come here is Chief Sube, Assistant Chief Ziegler, the captains, a great many of the lieutenants — they all are actual police officers who have done really good street work,” Call said “For the line-level officer, that’s really important. As an officer, if you have a leader who maybe isn’t familiar with the work, it can be a situation where you might not believe in that leader. We don’t have that problem here. It’s really a unique thing.”

Det. Nick Hidalgo has nearly 19 years of law enforcement experience and joined Ogden in January.

“I got the opportunity to work on a specialty assignment with a lot of OPD officers back when I worked for the state,” he said. “I got to see how they worked and I quickly realized they were second-to-none. The only way I was going to be able to reach my goals as an officer is to put myself in a position to learn from the best.”

It isn’t just people with long law enforcement careers that have been drawn to Ogden’s culture.

Officer Austin Hoyt started his career with Ogden just three months ago.

“I came from the academy self-sponsored,” he said. ” I got to go through a recruitment process through a lot of agencies throughout Utah — a lot of local agencies like Weber County, Layton, North Ogden. I applied everywhere I could and interviewed everywhere I could. One of the biggest differences from other agencies versus this agency is talking with different officers and different staff. … They actually care about you as a human being. As officers, they see your needs and they do everything in their ability to meet those needs. It’s not just you’re a badge number or one of 1,000, they take time to get to know you, get to know your family.”

Thomas said the numbers speak for themselves when it comes to the department’s recruiting successes, and that they aren’t quite done yet.

“We’re one of the only, that I know of, full agencies in the state of Utah,” he said. “We’re fully-manned. We’re allocated 150 sworn officers. Our mayor, being proactive, said, ‘Go to 160.’ We are currently above where we should be for manpower and our goal is to get to 160 and see what the budget says, what the numbers show and maybe go higher from there.”

The Ogden City Police Department is set to host a career fair on Sept. 23 from 4-6 p.m. at the Francom Public Safety Building.