Most politice officer salries and benefits are very good…..
Some have retirement’s after 20 or a few more years…..
There used to be thousands that would take civil service tests to join the ‘cops’…..
That was then….
As media attention showcases police mistake’s, abuses and violence in some cases?
Less men and women are choosing that carreer path…..
(What other job has you wearing a camera to record what you do during your work day?….But Department’s need to stop selling the SWAT units which are a tiny part of actual policing))
This IS developing in to a problem for the public who rely on someone showing up when they daill 911 for help….
“We’re having to really, really work hard to fill what we have,” said Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County, Ill., whose department is short more than 300 sworn officers. “And we’re still not filling at the rate that we would want.”
Cook County’s 5,000-inmate jail can’t afford to cut corners for safety reasons, so the patrol division runs understaffed, Dart said in an interview. Complicating matters, smaller police departments in the county’s villages and towns are shorthanded also, and have asked Dart’s agency to step in.
“Before, I’d occasionally get a department that needed some help on a weekend or something like that,” Dart said. “Now I get departments calling to ask me to do entire shifts for them, and then for weeks they just don’t have the bodies.”…
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“This is a very difficult job that not very many people can do well,” Lopez said. “And if you’re just trying to hire, hire, hire more and more people, it becomes less and less likely that those ranks are going to be filled — or even half-filled — with the people who have that unique set of skills.”….
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Departments that once marketed with simple photo shoots featuring K-9 units and SWAT teams are now paying up to $500,000 to produce cinematic renditions of police work. “They’ve never had this kind of need before,” Blonder said. “In the past they would put an ad in the newspaper, 5,000 people would show up, and they just had their pick of the litter.”
Police agencies are also increasingly recruiting laterally, offering bonuses and competitive salaries for officers to leave their departments, a strategy once unheard of in policing….
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Experts say the national examination of police abuses has also tarnished the profession for potential recruits, especially from poor or minority communities. Many of them say they would feel ashamed — or face blowback from friends or relatives — if they pursued a law enforcement career….
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Aileen McMonagle, a senior criminal justice major who has interned with the Philadelphia Police Department, said she finds herself in the minority of students defending law enforcement after police killings.
“Nobody wants to be a cop because of how much social media has impacted and changed the perspective of what it’s like to be a cop,” said McMonagle, who is White and from Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia. “People think you’re a bad person if you want to be a cop.”….
image…Officer Jarrett Gilbert at the Georgetown Police Department in Georgetown, Tex., in April. Like many departments across the country, it is understaffed and struggling with recruiting….Sergio Flores for The Washington Post