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.
The issue with rotations being “normal” is that it makes it trivial to protect abusers. Just look at the catholic church where it is pretty obvious that any time there is a new priest in town, some kid got molested.
I am also not convinced we would have good national standards considering how many red states are actively trying to cripple education.
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.