2y ago

Some small towns in America are disbanding police forces, citing hiring woes

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.

48 comments

Wishing a very pleasant day to everyone who decided not to become a police officer.
- At one point when I was 18 I almost started down that path. Thank god I didn't.
  
  🍻
- I shudder to think of the alternate timeline where I gave up on my dream and became a Mountie.
- Do you have a gun? Can you fight?
  No? Then you need cops.
  
  Evidently they don't
  
  Most people in the U.S. either have or can easily get a gun. A substantial majority of people can, in fact, fight. You're a fucking idiot.
I didn't expect small town USA to actually defund the police first.
- Try THAT in Small Town
- Ha!
- Yeah. They can't keep up with the funding that big cities have to outfit their cops in cool tactical gear.
My town had their police department disbanded after the mayor's son got arrested for a DUI about 20 years ago and we're doing just fine without cops.
- My town growing up (~2500 people) disbanded their police force in the 90s and just contracts out with the county. Small towns are generally fine without their own police force.
- What's the town?
  
  [Redacted for privacy reasons]
My town didn't have cops for over three years, and it was totally fine.
Small town in Ohio, we disbanded our local Police, and instead have county police here now
- Yeah, if they're going to stick with traditional US law enforcement, county police are the best way forward. Sheriffs offices should be abolished nation wide
- this is the reality, we have several overlapping forces who compete for staff leaving some places overflowing with officers and some completely empty.
  the whole county vs city vs state police forcing inefficiency needs to be addressed.
Honestly, the USA should nationalize the police. Standards and police academies (just a movie in many places, not an actual thing).
Cops could be rotated, and internal affairs could find and remove bad cops. Less local corruption.
- I don't know enough to know if nationalizing the police is a good idea, but that's already an issue. Police can and do just move from one department to another.
  At the very least there should be a national license or record that follows them.
  
  At least it's one target to fight to fix rather than every small town's own shitty way to be shitty, and blue states would in theory try to counter the red state shittiness.
  
  Yeah, I was with him until he said some bullshit about 'rotating' cops.
  Always something, lol.
- There really just shouldn't be cops.
very uplifting news
But then the only white people who get to shoot black people risk being charged for it!
This would be a good opportunity to try out some sort of volunteer community defense system and crisis intervention units. Both would be far more cost effective. If it were arranged appropriately to make volunteers accountable, it'd be a lot safer than traditional policing
- george zimmermans
Oh no! Who's going to drive all their tanks?
Law and order? Can't afford'er!
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.
“No one wants to harass black people any more.”
I believe it.
It's ridiculously expensive to hire cops and equip them with gear that makes them competitive with other cops.
https://is4-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/71BRIwkszauBISrnv-6I9w/1262x710.webp

48 comments