The Zo Knows: Police Departments facing shortage in Recruits

[primalmatter]

So a hashtag movement is equal to a group that practiced lynchings, arson, assassinations, judicial corruption, muggings, I mean I could keep going if want. Yeah, a 30 sec clip of some random people chanting = literally the black KKK.

Foolishness.

Rioting, pulling people out of trucks to beat them to death with hammers, arson, mugging, shootings.

I really don't see the difference you do.

[PACOX]

Rioting, pulling people out of trucks to beat them to death with hammers, arson, mugging, shootings.

I really don't see the difference you do.

A hashtag did all that?
Thats just as credible as blaming video games for gun violence.

Keep the false equivalences coming.

[BlackwingHecate]

Theres a black version of the KKK?

Sure. They're called The Black Panthers, and are mostly not a "thing" any more.

[Hiricine]

Sure. They're called The Black Panthers, and are mostly not a "thing" any more.

The memberships of both the KKK and the Black Panthers today is estimated in the thousands of people (appx 5000). Neither of them are a thing anymore.

edit: to respond to the topic, police benefited previously from having the respect of their community as well as bloated public service pension plans. Without the financial incentives or the respect, the two biggest reasons people wanted to be cops are gone.

[Witchblade77]

fun fact. police work especially early on paying relatively little is the reason why they have been having problems with getting qualified applicants for a while now and the reason why we have so many bad cops. gotta fill those positions, to standards get relaxed, assholes slip through the cracks, and so on. but... police officers do get paid relatively little. which is why they live and die on overtime (and/or working as private contractors during they off duty hours - SO works with quite a few of those) and so many of the better ones leave for private sector all together. pension is not everything, not when your day to day income is so shitty and you have to deal with the worst that society has to offer - again on day to day basis.

[Deleted]

It's not really a job any kid admires anymore, is it?

Bad press, bad pay and in a country where every potentially is packing a firearm you might end up dead too if unlucky.

[Ryme]

It's a pretty dreadful climate right now to become a police officer, I know it's something I wouldn't even consider.

[Deleted]

It's not really a job any kid admires anymore, is it?

Bad press, bad pay and in a country where every potentially is packing a firearm you might end up dead too if unlucky.

The bad press is on them. In my own country there's also a significant shortage of police offers, and this has been the case for years. Hiring requirements were lowered a bit which resulted in every brainless jock applying for the job. Our police force, at the bottom level, is staffed with brawny idiots with an authoritarian streak. Not exactly the kind of officer who inspires a young kid to apply for the badge one day.

In the past 12 months we had the following scandals:
- Orgies in our capital city between army men and young police girls. The army boys were staying at a police precinct during the Paris attacks, due to increased terrorist alert levels, and organized fuckfests with the local police broads.
- Several extortion schemes were unearthed that often involved new officers. One gang consisted of 5 young male police officers who were also charged with violent theft and blackmailing.
- A gang of young police officers in another city were systematically robbing illegal immigrants and were issuing fake fines to foreign drivers, payable on the spot.

Now Belgium is a small country, stories like these hit the news quite big. All of these involved "very young police officers", as one of our biggest newspapers put it.

It's a sad thing. My father was a police officer (Rijkswacht/Gendarmerie, the paramilitary branch of our federal police force) and his father was a police officer in our capital his entire life (Cavalry Department and part of the Royal Mounted Escort) and I have long considered applying myself. But, frankly, I have more talent/skills than to waste it in the current sorry state of law enforcement. No one is going to challenge me there since new recruits have the intellectual capacity of a worn out glove.

[TheCount]

You work for low wages, work all major holidays and weekends, and people generally don't like having to deal with cops. Traffic stops for example are very dangerous, you never know how people are going to react when you pull them over.

[zenkai]

I don't blame them. The way officers are treated these days is atrocious. It's a thankless job and the good ones suffer for the misdeeds of the bad ones. Doesn't matter what they do.

My sentiments exactly.

[Machismo]

There's no irony here. The reality is that cops everywhere are being scrutinized because of corrupt cops in departments that they have nothing to do with.

All cops should be scrutinized, as they are government employees.

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It's not really a job any kid admires anymore, is it?

Bad press, bad pay and in a country where every potentially is packing a firearm you might end up dead too if unlucky.

Police officers tend to make fairly good pay. It's well above the national average. Not only that, their retirement benefits are almost unmatched by anything else, anywhere. This is especially true for state troopers, who often can retire by 50, earning over $100k a year in retirement. That means that many states will pay their employees more in retirement, than they made while actually working.

[Svifnymr]

Police work is something that I considered doing early on. It's a kind of job that kind of naturally appeals to me. However, there's no way I'd want to work alongside the cops in a lot of departments, and since there's no guarantees I'd find a position readily available in an ethical department, it's a non-starter for me. I assume it would be the same way for a lot of people.

I considered it years ago, and I've met officers of every personality type through the years so that wasn't an issue for me. The issue really is the job itself in most areas. Your main calls are going to be stupid disturbances or domestic violence, maybe some trespassing. You're going to deal with the same idiots over and over again, and nothing you do will matter. I work in retail, when we bother having a shoplifter arrested, it'll take the police an hour to get to us. They know that even the perfect case won't really mean much in the long run, it'll all be part of some plea bargain.

Then they get plastered all over the news whenever a cop somewhere does something wrong, and they get accused of not furthering community relations while the community goes out of their way to consider cops the enemy.


Plus, every time you want to drive somewhere, everyone is doing lower than the speed limit around you! And you're not supposed to use your sirens for non-emergencies! Must be infuriating.

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Police officers tend to make fairly good pay. It's well above the national average. Not only that, their retirement benefits are almost unmatched by anything else, anywhere. This is especially true for state troopers, who often can retire by 50, earning over $100k a year in retirement. That means that many states will pay their employees more in retirement, than they made while actually working.

I'm sure there's an element of folks wanting to get to other areas that are similar pay without having to deal with as many idiots, so I'm sure the problem hiring is more in poorer areas. Though of course, wealthier areas also have their problems with folks thinking they're above the law.

[Machismo]

I considered it years ago, and I've met officers of every personality type through the years so that wasn't an issue for me. The issue really is the job itself in most areas. Your main calls are going to be stupid disturbances or domestic violence, maybe some trespassing. You're going to deal with the same idiots over and over again, and nothing you do will matter. I work in retail, when we bother having a shoplifter arrested, it'll take the police an hour to get to us. They know that even the perfect case won't really mean much in the long run, it'll all be part of some plea bargain.

Then they get plastered all over the news whenever a cop somewhere does something wrong, and they get accused of not furthering community relations while the community goes out of their way to consider cops the enemy.


Plus, every time you want to drive somewhere, everyone is doing lower than the speed limit around you! And you're not supposed to use your sirens for non-emergencies! Must be infuriating.

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I'm sure there's an element of folks wanting to get to other areas that are similar pay without having to deal with as many idiots, so I'm sure the problem hiring is more in poorer areas. Though of course, wealthier areas also have their problems with folks thinking they're above the law.

Actually, some very pro-police areas in Texas are also having problems. Of course, that's where they had the mass shootings, so it makes sense. I have several friends who are police officers, and their lists of complaints about the job vary. One friend doesn't like that his department makes about 60% as much as the next city over. The city that pays more is also having huge fiscal issues, and they pay more money per officer than almost any city in the country. It's not even an expensive area to live in, and hovers just above the national average in cost of living.

I have another friend who is getting tired of dealing with the lowest denominators in society. That is completely understandable, cops have to deal with tweakers and scumbags for 12 hours at a time. He also says he's tired of the mentality of most of the other officers in his department (roughly 31 officers). He said that the other officers have really shitty, alpha-type attitudes, and it reflects how they handle the general public. He feels his police department is starting to get a bad reputation in the town for having asshole cops. It's in a fairly well-off suburb of a major city. The crime rate is fairly low, with it being slightly below the national average.

I have another friend who is in federal law enforcement, and loves his job most of the time. He deals mostly with marijuana interdiction on federal land, so he gets shot at more than he would like. Admittedly, most of the shots are not designed to be aimed at him, but it's still annoying. He doesn't have an issue with pay, but he travels a ton.

Pay is generally based on the rough cost of living for the area, and California and the Northeast (not NYC) tend to be the highest. City cops and state troopers get paid more than sheriff's deputies, and state troopers tend to have the best retirements. Seriously, their retirements are absurd. I have no idea how states afford to pay them. In all cases, in almost every state, county, and city, officers make far about the median average for an individual in that area. In the past, officers outside of major cities have been able to avoid scrutiny. Those days are over. They are also having to deal with racial tensions. Some of that tension is their own fault, some of it is the fault of other cops in other cities and times, and some of it is the fault of ignorant citizens. Just as we demand every officer treat every individual differently, we should do the same for every officer. I think that gets lost on all of us, at times. My best friends are cops, and they know I love the shit out of them. However, I have no problem questioning the actions of police officers, as well as the behavior of departments, unions, legislators, and prosecutors. The system as a whole is the problem, not the individual officers. There's no reason to treat an officer as if he's the problem, until he gives a reason for you to do so.

[ItachiZaku]

Need more women. If women want equal representation in the board room, that better fucking want equality representation on the police force and sewage treatment plants.

[Bullettime]

Bad image of cops, awesome benefits but lackluster pay, and cop shooting incidents spook potential recruits even if the job is actually pretty safe on average compared to other fields. It doesn't help that they're surprisingly selective of who they even recruit, as odd as that sounds.

Been through the police hiring process and the academy when working corrections. It's a weird one.