The Cheyenne Police Department has loosened its tattoo policy in an effort to recruit the best officers they can.

"There's a lot of people who are looking to get into law enforcement who have (tattoos)," said Officer Kevin Malatesta.

Malatesta says the idea of allowing inked officers to wear short-sleeves and/or shorts was proposed about two years ago.

"Officers were in favor of changing that policy and just recently we put it out to the public," said Malatesta. "We had a poll that we put up on Facebook and allowed it to be out there for about two weeks."

Malatesta says thousands of people responded to the post and 90 percent were in favor of allowing officers to have tattoos displayed while on duty.

"With that, the department drafted a policy," said Malatesta. "So we're operating under this temporary policy at the moment. I don't see it changing much though from this temporary policy to the permanent one."

Malatesta says on-duty officers wishing to show their tattoos must get approval from their supervisors.

"We obviously don't want anything that's going to be offensive to the public," said Malatesta. "(But) we don't have officers that have any of those (tattoos) to begin with."

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