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.
Small town in Ohio, we disbanded our local Police, and instead have county police here now
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Yeah, if they’re going to stick with traditional US law enforcement, county police are the best way forward. Sheriffs offices should be abolished nation wide
Huh? Sheriff’s departments are the county police.
They’re not police in the way we regularly think of them. There are county police forces and there are county sheriff’s and while theres a decent degree of overlap in what their expected duties are, they aren’t the same thing. Sheriffs have very little, if any accountability to their community or oversight from local and state authorities. The only leg up that sheriff’s have in my view is that they’re an elected position. However, the way they’re structured makes that aspect even more ripe for corruption. Here’s a decent article breaking down the argument against sheriff offices. And a video about it if that’s more your jam
this is the reality, we have several overlapping forces who compete for staff leaving some places overflowing with officers and some completely empty.
the whole county vs city vs state police forcing inefficiency needs to be addressed.