Police officer applications have been flooding into the Dallas department since the fatal shooting of five officers on July 5.
In the 12 days following the tragedy (July 8–July 20), the department received 467 applications—an average of 39 applications per day, according to its official Facebook page.
That’s a 344 percent increase from the same 12-day period in June, when applications averaged 11 per day.
The department received 2,871 applications during the first nine months of the fiscal year (from Oct. 1 to June 30).
Following the police shooting Police Chief David Brown encouraged people to apply for a job—especially young black men who are upset about the policing in their communities.
“We’re hiring,” Chief Brown said in a press conference on July 11. “Get off that protest line and put an application in, and we'll put you in your neighborhood, and we will help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about.”
Brown turned down a full scholarship to University of Texas-Austin to become a Dallas police officer after witnessing the tribulations in his neighborhood.
“I actually left college my first semester of my senior year to come back and apply with the Dallas Police Department to do something about what I was seeing in my neighborhood,” Chief Brown said. “They took an inner city kid like me with flaws and made made me their police chief. And that’s an extraordinary city and have supported me through very difficult challenges.”
Dallas Police are accepting applications every day.
