It has never been more difficult to find a hero. Police departments across the country are struggling to fill their ranks, and officers are overworked, worrying residents and frustrating city and state officials.
Big cities don’t have enough police officers making the rounds. Baltimore, for example, has lost more than 100 officers since last year. That’s despite ending 2016 with the second-highest murder total in city history. In Seattle, city officials have seen a 90 percent drop in applicants over the past decade.
Small towns aren’t doing any better. Reno, Nevada, is receiving half as many applicants as it did 20 years ago. Overall, more than 85 percent of police officers agree their departments are understaffed, according to a Pew Center survey.
More jobs, fewer police
Some factors have driven this shortage of police recruits in recent years. The biggest is the continued success of the job market in general. Since the recovery began in June 2009 and employers began adding jobs regularly in February 2010, the economy has recaptured more than 16 million jobs during 85 months of continuous growth. Last year was particularly strong. Employers added 2.24 million jobs, and as of last month, the unemployment rate was back at a 10-year low of 4.5 percent.
And it’s stretches of sustained economic growth like this that have historically been bad for police departments across the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that the category of law enforcement jobs has seen “slower than average” growth, limping along at nearly half the growth rate of other professions.
Economists admit that every time the job market improves, police departments suffer, increasing the risk of officers being injured on the job due to lack of support. More career options tend to draw recruits into the more lucrative private sector. At the same time, departments in general have been tightening their rules for becoming officers, either through higher education requirements or longer training periods.
Perception of societies
It doesn’t help recruiting efforts when the job you’re trying to fill is becoming increasingly unpopular. On the one hand, you have a distrustful public that makes the job of the police difficult. On the other hand, there are city and state budget hawks trying to cut benefits and freeze department sizes. Whether it’s because of the latest police shooting or a viral cellphone video, trust in the police force fell to a 22-year low in 2015, according to Gallup research. It recovered slightly in the 2016 survey.
“It’s a thankless job, and it’s gotten more recent,” Roseville, Michigan Police Chief James Berlin told NBC News. “You will be criticized and degraded, and a lot of people think ‘who wants to do that’?”
Colorado Springs endured that after August 1. On January 9, 2014, when a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked weeks of protests across the country. The Colorado Springs Police Department saw a 50 percent increase in its attrition rate. After a pair of mass shootings last year in Colorado, the department saw 54 officers walk out the door.
“A lot of spouses are putting the same pressure on officers,” Mike Singels, president of the Colorado Springs Police Protection Association, told the Colorado Springs Gazette. “(Officers) look at the risk and decide, ‘This is not a job for me.'”
riskier than ever
The concern is valid. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 135 officers died in the line of duty in 2016, the highest total in five years. More than 20 of those deaths were the result of ambush-style attacks, a 20-year high. Nearly 40 percent of officers told Pew researchers that they almost always or often had serious concerns about their physical safety when on the job. Another 42 percent admitted that they sometimes have these concerns.
It seems that potential candidates are looking for lines of work that are safer, better paid, and have better hours. Or as Seattle police recruiter Jim Ritter told ABC News, “You can get shot for $40,000 or be home with your family for $60,000.”
But that is not to say that officers are not essential, or that they are not supported. There are resources to support police officers and their families despite these arguments. We fully stand behind our law enforcement men and women. In support of a much-needed police force, Colorado workers’ compensation attorney and department head Nick Fogel, along with his father Marshall Fogel, launched a scholarship competition for the Denver Police Officers Foundation.