Across the United States, from cities to rural counties, police departments are confronting a recruitment crisis. “Going back to 2010, we had about 4,700 online applications. That dropped down to about 1,900 last year,” said Steve Anderson, chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, in a Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) report last year. Seattle’s police department reported a 40 percent to 50 percent drop in applications, while Jefferson County, Colorado’s applications plummeted 70 percent. In total, 86 percent of police chiefs nationwide reported a shortage of sworn officers, with nearly half stating that the shortage had worsened over the past five years.
Currently, about 18,000 police departments in the U.S. are responsible for protecting over 300 million Americans. But there just aren’t enough cops to go around. This little-noticed staffing crisis could intensify over the next decade, especially as a glut of cops hired in the 1990s ages into retirement.
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