El Camino College hired two new officers to fill vacancies in its understaffed Campus Police force.
Officer Shahbaz Zaidi and police officer trainee Ryan Brown joined the ECC Police Department in August after a lengthy application process beginning in 2024.
“They’re very community oriented, they have the right attitudes, they have the right aptitude, and they have the right training experience and education,” ECC Police Chief Matthew Vander Horck said.
Brown attended ECC, was a campus security officer, and worked previously at the Los Angeles Police Department.
He must still go through the police academy to complete qualifications at the ECCPD.
There is a six month training program, and after the training program, a one year probation is given to the officer.
Zaidi, the new officer hire, has already passed academy training and is currently in the 6-month training program.
Prior to Vander Horck joining the force in January 2025, the ECCPD was understaffed by 50% for officers.
The ECCPD, which needed 12 officers in order to be fully staffed, had been looking to hire six new police officers.
Despite the need to hire more people, strict qualifications to become a police officer have to be kept during the hiring process.
“Every candidate and every applicant here has to go through an extremely vigorous hiring practice,” Police Chief Matthew Vander Horck said.
Applicants must pass multiple evaluations needed in order to join the ECCPD as an officer, including meeting the minimal requirements to apply and pass written and physical agility tests as well as a polygraph test.
Prospective hires also have to go through a mandatory background check on top of a physiological and a medical exam before they can be invited to a panel interview with the hiring committee, which includes the ECC police chief.
After applying in 2024, Zaidi and Brown were two of the candidates hired in August 2025 after an application process that took up to eight months.
Currently, the ECCPD is processing 50 applicants for the remaining four positions as officers.
Vander Hock is hoping to bring the hiring process down to six months for the remaining available positions.
Vander Horck previously worked as the assistant director of personnel at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and described processing the number of applicants attempting to become deputies through the academy as challenging.
“For every deputy that was in the academy, they were less than 10% of the total applicants. It’s one of the hardest positions to get,” Vander Horck said.
Before the Vander Hork became ECC’s police chief, the average time to hire new officers was about a year.
“So I know that anything that we can do to make the process go faster than the higher quality caliber personal applicant that we’ll be able to accept, and that’s the goal,” Vander Horck said.
