City Council on Monday agreed to hire 12 probationary police officers to get the police force, gutted by retirements, up to its authorized strength of 168 officers.
The new probationers, who entered the Reading Police Academy earlier in the day, are in addition to about two-dozen new officers who just completed or are still in field training.
But even those won’t be enough to keep the force at full strength, with more retirements expected this year, much less get the force back to the more than 200 officers it had several years ago.
Meanwhile, council awarded a design contract as the city gets started on replacing the first equipment at the wastewater treatment plant on Fritz’s Island, required by state and federal environmental agencies in 2004 as part of a court-ordered consent decree.
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