According to the Associated Press, the U.S. is in the midst of a police officer shortage that many in law enforcement blame on the two-fold morale hit of 2020 — the coronavirus pandemic and criticism of police that boiled over with the murder of George Floyd by a police officer — and from Minnesota to Maine, Ohio to Texas, small towns unable to fill jobs are eliminating their police departments and turning over police work to county sheriffs, neighboring towns, or state police.
At least 521 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 1,000–200,000 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.
At the heart of the problem is the exodus from law enforcement. Officer resignations were up 47% last year compared to 2019 — the year before the pandemic and Floyd’s killing — and retirements are up 19%. That’s all according to a survey of nearly 200 police agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Compounding the exodus of veteran officers, young people are increasingly unwilling to go through the months of training necessary to become a police officer, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum.
Agencies of all sizes are struggling to fill open positions, but the problem is especially dire in smaller communities that can’t match the pay and incentives offered by bigger places.
Generally, crime rates were unchanged in towns that dropped their departments, the Rice University study found. Leaders of several towns said they’ve been happy with the change; others worry about the challenge this poses to towns across the nation.
