Attacks on Police, Rigorous Tests Behind Nationwide Cop Shortage

Targeted attacks on police, candidates who can’t pass stringent background checks and physical agility tests, and shrinking benefits packages are among the factors contributing to the nation’s latest hiring crisis — the ability to attract law enforcement officers. Experts say the shortage of qualified applicants to adequately staff police departments has implications for the future if something isn’t done now to reverse the trend.

The number of police officers on the streets in Michigan — including municipal officers, county sheriff’s deputies and tribal law enforcement authorities — has been declining since 2001, when there were 22,488, to the current 18,399 as of Oct. 31, according to the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards.

In one suburban Detroit police department — Roseville in Macomb County — Police Chief James Berlin said that in recent years, he’s had trouble finding the same caliber of applicant among the few who do show interest in law enforcement jobs.

A decade ago, he might receive 200 applications for two or three police job openings, Berlin told The Detroit News. Now, he gets 25 or so for two times the number of positions, and half of those don’t make it past the background check.

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, who heads one of the largest sheriff’s departments in the country, had similar frustrations last summer. He had been trying to fill about 165 positions that had been vacant since the Great Recession, but a shortage in qualified applicants meant he would have to rely on costly overtime to avoid coverage gaps that would be felt by residents.

“Overtime can burn you out and you want people, obviously, sharp and rested and you want them to have a family life,” Bouchard said at the time.

Bouchard is reaching out to members of the military as well as private and charter schools to prepare youths for law enforcement careers.

The situation is similar in Wayne County, where Sheriff Benny Napoleon has nearly 200 open positions.

“We’re doing everything that we can afford to do at this time, but it’s still a challenge,” Napoleon told The Detroit News of his agency’s recruiting efforts, which include a professional staffing recruiter, outreach at churches, community groups, fraternities and sororities, as well as a new co-op study program through the county’s community college.

David Harvey, the executive director of the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards, told The Detroit News that police agencies as a whole are at “a crisis situation with staffing” that will only worsen in years to come. Like Bouchard, he noted big reductions in police agency staffing as property tax receipts and revenue sharing plummeted.

“Some places, people moved out,” said Harvey, a former Garden City police chief and city manager. “You add that up and there’s a loss of revenue into the communities for cities to pay for those services. So they had to cut somewhere.”

Nationally, applicants for police positions were down 90 percent in mid-2016, ABC News reported. Cops have among the most dangerous jobs in America, Seattle police recruiter Jim Ritter told the network.

“You can get shot at for $40,000, or be home with your family for $60,000,” Ritter said.

2016 a Deadly Year for Police

In Detroit, three police officers were killed in 2016. On Nov. 22, Wayne State University Police Sgt. Collin Rose was shot in the head and died a day later. A man who had been arrested was released after police admitted they had the wrong suspect. Detroit Police Officer Myron Jarrett died Oct. 29 after he was struck in a hit-and-run crash on Oct. 29. Detroit Police Sgt. Kenneth Steil died unexpectedly on Sept. 17 when a blood clot stopped his heart. He had been shot in the shoulder five days earlier by a fleeing suspect but had been expected to recover.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 135 officers were killed in the line of duty in 2016, the highest level in five years. Michigan, where six police officers died in the line of duty in 2016, had one of the highest totals, surpassed by Texas (17), California (10), Louisiana (nine) and Georgia (eight).

Michigan's other line-of-duty deaths included two Berrien County court bailiffs, Joseph Zangaro and Ronald Kienzle, who were shot and killed by an inmate on July 11. The third Michigan police officer killed in the line of duty was Branch County Deputy Sheriff Michael Winter, who was fatally injured when he was thrown from a horse while on special detail at a Memorial Day parade in Quincy, Michigan.

The 135 line-of-duty deaths included 64 shooting deaths — 21 of them the result of ambush attacks, the highest total of such deaths in more than two decades, the group said in its 2016 Law Enforcement Fatalities Report.

One of the deadliest of those attacks was in Dallas on July 8, 2016. A Redford Township, Michigan, native, former Wayne County Sheriff's Deputy Michael Krol, was among five police officers killed in the sniper attack that targeted police as payback for police shootings of two black men earlier in the week.

Assassinations and other threats against cops have made for a tough recruiting climate.

“It’s a lot harder sell now,” Jeff Roorda, business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, told FoxNews.com. “This is a very real phenomenon.”

Roorda was targeted with a Twitter hashtag — #KillRoorda — after he defended police in the Ferguson, Missouri, shooting of Michael Brown. “You no longer have to worry about your life while in uniform,” Roorda told Fox News. “Now you have to be worried about the well-being of your family.”

Jim Paul, who retired from the Michigan State Police in the early 2000s after nearly 30 years of service, told The Detroit News he doesn’t know if he would choose the same career path today. “It’s totally different than when I came in,” he told the newspaper. “I’ve never seen police officers targeted for assaults and assassinations like what’s going on today.”

Recruitment Changes

Experts say the difficulty filling positions could result in more crime.

“More and more, departments are finding that people are reluctant to consider policing as a career, because of the tension that exists in communities across the country,” Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, told USA Today. “It’s particularly tough in communities of color. The reality is those are exactly the people we need.”

Police agencies across the country are changing their recruiting tactics in minority communities that are under-represented in police ranks. For example, in Wichita, Kansas, where Hispanics make up about 15 percent of the city’s population but only 7 percent of the police force, efforts are underway to make the force more reflective of the community it serves.

In Detroit, the police department is focusing on recruiting more women so its numbers of female police officers more closely match other cities. The Detroit Police Department has also put its applications online, developed a college intern program and has expanded its field recruiting, especially as Detroit works to shake its image as an unsafe city.

“It’s absolutely critical to recruit because we have so many different initiatives,” First Assistant Chief Lashinda Stair told The Detroit News. “We want to continue to put as many people on the ground as possible because we all know that in order to continue to bring people here to Detroit to work, live and play, we need to make sure that the city is safe.”

The Michigan State Police is recruiting minorities as well and recently held a recruiting seminar at Detroit’s Second Ebenezer Church. There are currently 1,065 troopers on the roads in Michigan, and the agency plans to be at the Detroit North American International Auto Show this month.

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