America is in the midst of a police officer shortage. Agencies of all sizes are struggling to fill open positions.

As Goodhue Police Chief Josh Smith struggled this summer to fill vacancies in his small department, he warned the town’s City Council that unless pay and benefits improved, finding new officers would never happen.

When nothing changed, Smith quit. So did his few remaining officers, leading the Minnesota town of 1,300 residents to shutter its police force in late August.

America is in the midst of a police officer shortage that many in law enforcement blame on the twofold morale hit of 2020 — the coronavirus pandemic and criticism of police that boiled over with the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. From Minnesota to Maine, Ohio to Texas, small towns unable to fill jobs are eliminating their police departments and turning over police work to their county sheriff, a neighboring town or state police.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    12·
    1 year ago

    At least 521 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 1,000 to 200,000 disbanded policing between 1972 and 2017, according to a peer-reviewed 2022 paper by Rice University Professor of Economics Richard T. Boylan.

    In the past two years, at least 12 small towns have dissolved their departments.

    That works out to an average of 11 per year. I haven’t needed to think about numbers in a long time. Did I fuck that up? Cause if not, this sounds like a lot of panic over losing fewer police departments than the norm.