North Liberty Police Department rebuilding after year of officer turnover

Law enforcement departments across Iowa have struggled to retain officers in recent years. Turnover — which can mean additional expenses for cities that have to recruit and train new officers — is especially acute at smaller departments, which are seen by some as stepping stones to careers in larger departments.

In Eastern Iowa, the North Liberty Police Department has seen unusually high turnover. More than two-thirds of its officers have left since April 2024, shortly after the department’s officers union and sergeants union released a letter saying they had “no confidence” in Chief Diane Venenga, alleging her “leadership has consistently fallen short of the standards expected of a police chief.”

In those 14 months, 16 officers have resigned — two-thirds of the 24 officers that comprise a fully-staffed North Liberty department.

As the city has worked to rebuild the police department’s ranks, it has adjusted officer pay, improved departmental communication and created systems for addressing issues, all in an effort to not just recruit, but retain officers.

Officer numbers growing across Iowa

Iowa law enforcement agencies have struggled since 2020 — amid the COVID-19 pandemic and additional scrutiny of police following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis — to retain officers. While numbers are beginning to rebound, more growth still is needed.

In fiscal year 2024, the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy certified 352 new peace officers, and the total number of officers in the state increased by 110, from 6,560 to 6,670, according to the academy’s annual reports for fiscal years 2024 and 2023.

That total still is less than the 6,759 officers the state had in June 2020, after certifying 377 new officers in fiscal year 2020. Between July 2020 and July 2021, the total number of officers in the state dropped from 6,759 to 6,511, even though the academy certified 367 new officers that year, according to annual reports from fiscal years 2020 and 2021.

Rick Martinez, chair of the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Council and former chief of police in Nevada, Iowa, said hiring and retention became more difficult because fewer people saw law enforcement as a career worth pursuing.

“I don't think we’ve fully rebounded from that, although … we're starting to get back into what it used to be before COVID, but we're not quite there yet, and it's going to be a while before we do get there,” he said.

Martinez said smaller departments, like North Liberty and Nevada, tend to see more turnover than larger cities, because officers often start their careers in a small department and then seek better options elsewhere. Even before 2020, he saw regular turnover in his role as chief in Nevada, but usually only one or two officers per year.

“In the end, law enforcement has to hire the best qualified candidates that they can for the positions that they’re going to be in, and the numbers just aren’t there anymore. So, it’s a real challenge,” he said.

Hiring and training new officers

North Liberty, with its 16 resignations and one officer termination since April 2024, still is not up to a full staff of 24, but it has hired nine new officers in the last year.

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Hiring has been one of North Liberty Chief Venenga’s main priorities over the last year, and she said the city is continuing to look for ways to be flexible with testing and training options.

The Iowa Law Enforcement Academy has four 16-week training cycles each year, so the timing of new officers starting work in the department is partially dependent on when those academy sessions start. Venenga said she’s been looking into the possibility of having new officers start their department training before going to the academy, so that hiring can happen more frequently.

Department training includes sending new recruits on patrol with a certified field training officer, who is paid two hours of overtime for each day they spend training.

Turnover of officers — and training new ones after they’re hired — can be costly for cities.

The North Liberty Police Department spent $93,585.86 on overtime pay between May 1, 2024 and May 1, 2025, a decrease from the $112,557.61 spent in the 12 months prior, according to North Liberty Community Relations Director Nick Bergus.

The city also spent $117,703.08 in the last year on things like tuition, payroll, housing and meals as it put new officers through the police academy in Des Moines. In the same time, the city spent $4,016.57 on other aspects of hiring, like recruitment, physicals and background checks, Bergus said.

New officers sign a contract with the department when they are hired. It states that if they leave the department within four years they must repay part of the costs associated with their hiring, including the costs of the law enforcement academy and the overtime paid to the officer who trained them.

The total cost outlined in a new officer’s contract is usually about $20,000, and the amount the officer is required to pay back decreases by 25 percent for each year the officer stays in North Liberty. If an officer is leaving to join a different law enforcement agency, their new agency often will buy out the contract, Venenga said.

Generally, officer turnover and having officers doubled up while training hasn’t affected shifts, Venenga said, but coverage has changed in some instances. For example, an officer and trainee on duty might be assigned to two of the designated patrol areas in the city at a time instead of one. The department’s lieutenants also have stepped in to help with patrolling, which has prevented changes in shifts. Venenga herself does not go on patrol.

“The lieutenants have been working patrol as well, and they fill in anytime somebody needs a vacation day or if somebody calls in sick,” Venenga said. “Coverage has always been provided, which has been fantastic.”

Investigation found need for better communication

Following the unions’ vote of no confidence in Venenga last year, the chief was placed on a three-month paid leave while attorney Jason Palmer of Lamson Dugan & Murray of Omaha, Neb., — hired by the city of North Liberty — investigated complaints made against her in the vote.

Palmer found that Venenga had not violated any law, acted maliciously or failed to protect officers, but he did identify a need to improve communication and rebuild trust within the department, according to a news release issued by the city at the time.

Venenga said that since returning to work almost a year ago, she has worked with the city to implement strategies to improve communication, like involving more officers in briefing meetings and hosting monthly meetings with sergeants to discuss department concerns. There also have been increases in pay and changes in the way paid time off is applied and rolls over from year to year, which addressed some union-related requests that officers made, Venenga said.

Responding to officers’ needs is part of the department’s way of working to retain them as North Liberty employees.

“My biggest thing is I've encouraged officers to be happy. I want them to have a happy work life. I want them to have a happy home life,” Venenga said. “We need our police officers to be happy, as happy as they can be. They can go anywhere. Right now in this environment, we can pretty much go anywhere and pick up a job, if so be.”

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Officer concerns

The Gazette reached out to some of the officers who have left the department in the last year. All declined to comment about why they left. Most stated they would like to speak about their concerns with the department but that they couldn’t because of their new jobs. Many of the former North Liberty officers have taken jobs with other law enforcement agencies in Johnson County.

In the letter released last year with the vote of no confidence, officers outlined a number of complaints about Venenga’s leadership, including poor communication, time mismanagement, favoritism in the enforcement of department policies, decision making without officer input, restrictive time off policies, and others.

Juan Santiago, a former North Liberty officer who retired two years before the vote of no-confidence, said there have been problems with communication and trust between the officers and the leadership in the department for years.

“I say this with pain in my heart, because I love that department. I love what it stood for, and I love the community, but it hurts and it saddens me to see so many great officers leaving because of the lack of leadership,” Santiago said of the resignations over the last year. “I feel for the officers that are left, as well as for the officers that are coming in, because they're having to live up to what's going on and what's happened.”

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Santiago was a full-time officer under Venenga between 2016 and 2022. Before that, he worked part-time in the department from 2007 to 2016, while also working as a high risk unit officer with the Iowa Department of Corrections. Most of his part-time service was under the previous chief, Jim Warkentin, who left the department in 2013.

Santiago said he doesn’t believe the communication issues were only Venenga’s fault, but said that concerns brought up by officers seldom made it all the way through the chain of command to Venenga, and officers didn’t usually get a response to complaints. Santiago said officers seldom heard from Venenga, especially during 2019 and 2020 while the city was working on a new building, which the police department moved into in August 2020.

“To her credit … she went through a lot when she was working with building the new police department, the new building. I think in doing so, she lost track of what was really going on with the department, including losing contact with officers themselves. We would rarely see her. We rarely talked to her.”

Many of the concerns that Santiago himself had raised when he worked with the department, which he didn’t feel were addressed by leadership, had to do with the way community relationships were handled.

“I tried on several occasions to do different things that would involve helping the community, other than the bagging and tagging, and I was either not allowed or discouraged from doing it,” Santiago said. “I’ve always been more about giving to the community and being part of the community, rather than only responding to calls … and that has not been encouraged by the department. I did everything I did on my own.”

Santiago has been vocal on social media and in communication with city leaders about his concerns about the police department. After retiring, he kept in contact with many of the officers in the department and said he felt compelled to speak out on their behalf, since they feared retribution within the department if they voiced their own complaints.

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In April, Santiago sent an email to the North Liberty mayor and city council members, expressing his concerns about the high rate of turnover the department was seeing, which he attributed to low morale and the atmosphere at the department.

“Culture change will certainly take time and good-faith efforts from every member of the department,” North Liberty Mayor Chris Hoffman wrote to Santiago in an email response. “Long-term resolutions will naturally take more time and will require support from, and respect for, all members of the department.”

Department response

To help with that cultural shift, the department has created a retention, recruitment and culture committee, which includes representatives from all parts of the department, including officers, animal control, administration, and records staff.

“It's pretty much everybody that are members of the department, that come together and we talk about things that are needs, wants, likes, and things that we can help improve. So, it's been a really nice open communication,” Venenga said. “The new officers, they’re happy to be here. They want to be here, and they don’t see any issues … and they’ll report that during the committee meetings. The other officers, they’ve asked for changes, and we tried to accommodate or make those changes.”

The committee meets about every six weeks, unless there is an issue that needs to be discussed sooner, Venenga said.

The city also worked with the police unions last year, despite it not being a contract negotiation year, to increase pay for officers and change paid time off policies so that unused vacation hours would roll over from year to year.

The current average officer’s salary in the department is $71,084.93. Venenga earns $155,459.17 per year as chief.

In comparison, the average salary among officers in the Iowa City Police Department is $84,763.58, according to an Iowa City Police spokesperson.

The union contracts for both the officers’ union and the sergeants’ union in North Liberty are up for negotiation this year, and Venenga said negotiations for those contracts are almost finished, with tentative agreements reached with both unions.

“I appreciate the support that the community, that city leaders, that my command staff has provided, and that we can all do better. I’m willing to do better. So, if I need to work on building trust with the officers, I will do everything within my power to do that,” Venenga said.

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com