Saginaw is one of 253 departments statewide and more than 7,000 nationally to receive federal stimulus dollars, awarded in late July to cities with the “poorest fiscal health” and “highest levels of crime,” said Gilbert Moore, spokesman for the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

Saginaw Police Chief Gerald H. Cliff said the city will use the $1.12 million grant to hire five police officers, whose salaries will be subsidized by the grant for the next three years.

The city budgets for 100 positions, and five officers retired or resigned in the past year, leaving 95 in the department, Cliff said. These open positions, in addition to the five grant-funded slots, means the department is looking for 10 new officers, Cliff said.

New officers, who earn $38,846 per year, take about two months to complete the full hiring process, said Beth Church, who works in the city’s Employee Services Department.

The process began in June with a civil service exam. Top finishers moved on to oral interviews. A panel with a city human resources representative and two to three police employees conducted the interviews and adjusted the rankings.

The department ran background checks, beginning at the top of the list. Cliff said they selected four candidates, two of whom still need to attend the 16-week police academy that begins Aug. 24, and two of whom already have completed the academy but don’t have a scheduled start date. The candidate pool started with 99 applicants, 52 who were eligible.

Cliff said the hiring pool traditionally was limited to hiring only Police Academy graduates because the city couldn’t afford to pay the officers’ salaries and benefits during training.

This “eliminated people desperately in need of a job and impacted racial diversity” on the force, Cliff said.

Now, the department pays the $5,000 to $6,000 cost of attending the academy for new recruits and recovers it from their first year’s salary, Cliff said. He said this increases the diversity of the hiring pool.

Once in Saginaw, new officers also complete 16 weeks of field training with another officer, Sgt. A.J. Tuer said.

They’re schooled on the roads, court rules, city regulations, department policy and report writing.

“They have to know everything,” Cliff said.