"We want to be comparable enough to other departments so that we don't have this kind of turnover any more," he said. The turnover rate in fiscal year 2016 was 26 percent.
Stewart said officers in Anderson start at around $30,000 or $33,000 a year, depending on whether they are certified.
A compensation study is expected to be finished soon and could help justify a pay raise for officers, the chief said. Higher pay could prompt some of the officers who have left to return, as well as attract a bigger pool of new candidates and retain existing officers.
Anderson City Council member Tony Stewart suggested at a public safety meeting last week that the increase could go up to match the Greenville Police Department's starting salary of $38,000.
Anderson city officials are about to start work on the annual budget and have not determined whether the budget can sustain a raises are possible, but it would help keep officers, Tony Stewart said Tuesday.
City Manager Linda McConnell said in an email that the upcoming budget process would be a chance to come up with a strategy to better retain officers.
Anderson County Sheriff's Office deputies start at around $32,000, an increase of around $1,000 from last year.
Greenville Police spokesman Officer Johnathan Bragg said the department's starting pay was recently raised in an effort to recruit new officers and existing officers received raises in an effort to keep them. The department has 15 openings on its nearly 200-member force.
Increasing city officers' pay to $38,000 would make Anderson one of the best paid departments in the state and would certainly help with retaining officers, said Ryan Alphin, executive director of the South Carolina Police Chiefs Association. A handful of police departments have starting pay above $40,000 and those departments rarely have problems hiring officers, he said.
In the past few months, the Anderson Police Department has lost seven officers to the Anderson County Sheriff's Office, two to the South Carolina Highway Patrol and three to retirement, Chief Stewart said. There are eight vacancies.
Four officers have been hired and are in training and the chief said he expects to hire more officers in the coming months, as well as get a boost in the summer when a half dozen school resource officers become available.
Several city officers have been reassigned, including from the street crime unit and warrant division, to cover patrol shifts, the chief said.
While the department's 2016 turnover rate was higher than normal, so was 2015's 10 percent turnover lower than normal. But in the last five fiscal years, the department has averaged about 20 percent turnover per year.
Turnover rates of around 20 percent to 25 percent are common in South Carolina, said Florance McCants, a spokeswoman for the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, which trains and certifies officers.
She said officers are increasingly likely to move from department to department, for reasons including pay differences as small as $500 or to get opportunities to work in specialized positions such as a SWAT team.
High turnover rates also reduce the effectiveness of community policing, Alphin said.
"This isn't a problem just for one city or even South Carolina," he said. "It's a national problem. The days of an officer working at one department for 25 years are over."
Chief Stewart said many qualified people are scared away from the profession by false perceptions that they are not appreciated.
"When you come into work, you have no idea of what you're going to be doing each day," Stewart said. "It's really a roller coaster ride. There are really exciting days and some days of a lot of paperwork."
Follow Mike Ellis on Twitter @MikeEllis_AIM
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