The Thin Blue Line in Dallas may be getting thicker.
(CNN)- Applications to the force have jumped 344% since five police officers were massacred in Dallas on July 7, compared with the same period in June, the department brass reported Saturday.
There were 136 applications from June 8 to June 20 and 467 applications from July 8 to July 20, the department said.
Whether applications will result in more recruits remains to be seen, but the jump follows a call from Chief David Brown to Black Lives Matter protesters to join the department if they wanted to improve it.
“Serve your communities,” he said at a news conference four days after the five officers were killed in an ambush by a man angry about police shootings in Lousiana, Minnesota and across the country. “We’re hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in.
We’ll put you in your neighborhood and we will help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about.”
The officers were killed while protecting a Black Lives Matter protest.
But joining the department is no guarantee that officers will stay there.
The department has suffered from poor morale and thinning ranks for years,in part because its starting pay is just under $45,000 a year, which Brown told CNN earlier this month was the lowest in the Dallas area.