Pasadena Police Swear in Seven Officers

Seven new police officers for the Pasadena Police Department were sworn into office Wednesday at City Hall.

City Clerk Mark Jomsky led the swearing in, with Pasadena Police Chief Phillip Sanchez and other staff from the police department witnessing.

Lt. Tracey Ibarra, acting Pasadena Police Public Information Officer, said the new officers include two new hires and five lateral-entry officers.

“This is an opportunity that we recognize them into other employees of the police department who may not know,” Ibarra said. “When you’re a lateral, you get transferred and then you start to work. Until we have this recognition ceremony to bring them out to everybody, they may not even know that the person is somebody who just started working for the organization.”

Ibarra said joining the police department as a lateral is a little different at a graduation, in that by the time an officer graduates from the police academy, they’ve been with the organization for some time and they know the people.

“But if it’s a lateral, you get sworn in and you start working,” Ibarra said.

Ibarra said the Pasadena Police Department still has some vacancies in the force and would welcome qualified people to apply. The department is practicing diversity in the selection process and is open to accepting people coming from the various ethnic groups in the City and a balance of male and female applicants.

But they key, she said, is interest in serving the community.

“If there are people from the Pasadena area who are interested in serving the community, that’s what we’re looking for,” Ibarra said.

Ibarra said retirements in the force also open up new opportunities for fresh officers. The number of retiring officers at a given period also vary, depending on when persons were hired as officers.

“So if you have a graduating class and you have four graduates from that class, then technically they will qualify for retirement around the same period of time, if they went to the maximum amount of time,” Ibarra said.

“So then, if you had more hirees that qualified by tenure or retirement, then you’ll have more vacancies potentially at a short period of time and then you’ll have new hires. There are probably on average three or four of a graduating class, so it’s really kind of staggered out.”

The police department’s website, www.cityofpasadena.net/Police, has complete information about how to apply into the police force, including procedures for hiring lateral officers and pre-service police officers.