Wilder welcomed new police and fire recruits during its city council meeting on Monday.
Mayor Valerie Jones said the process for gaining these recruits has taken several months but has been well worth it, with its candidate search opening up in October of 2023.
“We’ve been working long and hard on the opportunity to build our bench within the police department,” Jones said. “We’ve not sent a candidate to the recruit class since the 1990s, so we are extremely excited.”
Wilder will be sending two recruits to the police academy, with their start date planned for October of this year.
The addition of these two recruits will alleviate the issues that Wilder’s understaffed police force currently faces.
“We come in as one of the smallest agencies in Northern Kentucky, but yet our call volume doesn’t justify being one of the smallest agencies,” Police Captain Chad Martin said. “This is a huge moment for us to be able to increase staffing by two officers in a time when the rest of the nation is seeing an officer shortage.”
One of the new recruits, Douglas Tyler, was sworn in in front of both the Council and his family. The other recruit, Noah Tuke, currently serves as a National Guardsman and was not able to attend, but will be introduced in front of council at a later time.
Wilder also welcomed Edgar Rowland to the position of full-time firefighter/EMT. Fire Chief Doug Neyman said that Rowland has worked for the city’s fire department for the last year part-time and is an excellent candidate to go full-time.
“He comes from a long family of public service,” Neyman said. “They have some deep roots in Wilder.”
