Brink of Failure: Police Departments Approaching the Point of No Return

As major police departments struggle to survive, a pathetic attack on sheriffs begins

Jul 07, 2024

a police car parked on the side of the road — Photo by Albert Stoynov on Unsplash

It’s painful to watch, but too many major law enforcement agencies will be questioning their own survival very soon. Some have a predictable safety net and will continue to exist as program offices managing the contracted services they used to provide. Others face completely uncharted territory.

I was fortunate to work with many different police agencies during my career, most within my judicial circuit. Soon, my responsibilities required me to have a basic knowledge of every agency in my nine-county region, then nearly half the state and even more while hosting international conferences. This past year, trips to Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, introduced me to many law enforcement veterans from consent decree cities as well as rural western policing of vast public lands.

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The so-called recruiting and retention crisis has affected city, county and state agencies across this nation. Agencies that used to reject hundreds of qualified candidates now have the tables turned on them.

To paraphrase a line from a parody movie: “Are you the best of the best? No, we’re the best of what’s left!”

Seattle

No one is looking forward to the first failure, but it’s coming. We should effort to know what it is going to look like. Based on their sizes, the scenarios vary widely. If Seattle fails, the Seattle Police Department will likely remain in existence as an administrative body or program office.

According to MyNorthwest: “At only 913 deployable officers, the SPD says staffing is at the lowest level since 2009. It’s actually much worse. The Jason Rantz Show on KTTH obtained an SPD staffing document from 1958 showing authorized personnel on Dec. 31, 1957. It was 925 at the time.”

In their case, as shifts fail to meet minimum manning, portions of the city will be contracted out to the King County Sheriff’s Office or other agencies. I don’t doubt that this will be a gradual change and many city officers will become deputies in the process. However, since King County Charter Amendment 5 in 2020 changed the role of sheriff from being an elected position to an appointed position, this is a unique position from the other 38 counties in Washington. King County is not immune from difficulties hiring and retaining staff so maintaining the standards of manning that municipal taxpayers fund will be challenging.

white and green dome cathedral in between high-rise buildings during daytime — Photo by Brittney Butler on Unsplash

St. Louis

The City of St. Louis recently made the news as crossing the milestone of having 1,000 unsolved homicides since 2014.

“Thomas Hargrove, the founder of the Murder Accountability Project, a group that compiles data on unsolved homicides, reports that there were 1,903 homicides in St. Louis from 2013 through 2022, of which 1,068 remain unsolved.”

St. Louis was defunding the police before it was an activist demand. Between rising crime and a decline in officers, residents moved and took their tax dollars with them. Budgeted for more than 1200 officers, they remain 300 short. Just 26 years ago, their ranks had an additional 700 cops. “In 1998, staffing levels stood at over 1,600 officers. In 2019 the police department’s homicide budget was cut for the third time since 2012, American Public Media reported.”

Who is going to rescue St. Louis? Apparently not the St. Louis County Police. According to former officer

Chris McDaniel

, a twice deployed infantryman of the 101^st Airborne to Iraq, who joined as a crime analyst around 2015. He later became a police officer from 2016 to 2022, in what I would consider to be among the most challenging times to be in law enforcement.

He says, “Rules (were) applied with strict scrutiny to police officers, needed to be carefully "interpreted" when the matter involved anyone with rank. And in 2021, the resignations began. I observed weekly one or two people resigning, perhaps not every week--but often.”

His analytical mind quickly recognized that more officers were leaving than being replaced. This will be covered in depth in a future article with more of his valuable insights.

body of water near green trees and high rise buildings during daytime — Photo by Benjamin R. on Unsplash

Chicago

Chicago is not immediately close to failure but the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, misses no opportunity to handicap law enforcement. He, and enough aldermen, view police as an oppressive force and a cause of crime. A ‘fleas cause dogs’ argument. While being down 2,000 officers and facing soon the most tumultuous political convention, likely putting 1968 to shame, the Chicago Police Department is underprepared by design. Amateur sleuths isolate public crime data and can reliably predict where gun violence will occur, and more importantly, likely will not occur. When weekend shooting woes are not national news, city and state fiscal deficits make the headlines.

During the writing of this article, in Chicago, 71 were shot and eleven died during the Independence Day weekend in 2024. The news article notes that 43 were shot, six fatally, in less than 12 hours.

Wall Street firms and auto manufactures may be deemed too big to fail, but not police departments. Chicago will not fail when it has zero officers, but it will likely be when it loses enough officers to be 3,000 to 3,500 short. Unlike Seattle, no large agency such as the Cook County Sheriff’s Office or the Illinois State Police has the substance or the staffing to fill in the gap. They are also dealing with their own issues. Sadly, the murder rate will climb, not to New Orleans, Jackson (MS), or St. Louis levels, but the volume of shootings and deaths will result in scandalous reputational damage.

The Chicago and Illinois taxation policies have surpassed the point of diminishing return. The most heavily taxed citizens in the nation are figuring it out and moving. Like a survivor in a life raft attempting to drink seawater to survive, the state and the city are on a collision course with an unpleasant reality. I’ve been a fan of Chicago for decades and I can’t wait for my next visit and enjoy the amazing museums and restaurants. No one is going to want to live, work, or visit there unless public safety improves or even reverses its decline.

city skyline during night time — Photo by Rebecca Lawrence on Unsplash

Phoenix: Taking a Stand

Like many cities, the Department of Justice (DOJ) office headed by Kristen Clarke targeted the City of Phoenix and its police department accusing them of a pattern and practice of civil rights violations. According to reports, the city has invested six million dollars over the past few years in responding to the complaints using third party auditors to avoid being sued by the DOJ Civil Rights Division. Employing an assortment of dirty tricks, the DOJ trickled out unsourced executive summaries.

Due to a grassroots effort, assisted by Dr.

Travis Yates

, local leaders looked at the outcomes of other cities subjected to monitoring via a consent decree to settle the lawsuits and foresaw the tens of millions of dollars this would cost as well as the escalation of violent crime, and they called DOJ’s bluff. When the cards were flipped over, the report contained a series of unverifiable incidents, that may or may not have happened, but were so obfuscated such that it was impossible to make a case or correct an error. "We have combed through the report, and are appalled," said APA President Justin Harris. "It is highly irresponsible and offensive for the Department of Justice to make allegations that have zero insight about the incidents they are reporting on."

“Here’s what the DOJ report did not include: a full set of facts,” stated Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell.
“Nor did it ask the right questions. For example, the DOJ asked why there are so many shootings by police. Yet, it failed to ask why so many people are shooting at police or brandishing knives and other weapons at them.”

Phoenix has a fight on their hands, but they are working a winning strategy.

Sheriffs under attack

The magazine Governing recently put out an article on their perspective of elected sheriffs and how their authority is concerning, nearly as concerning as their concentrated demographics. They described the controversial personalities to be troubling as well as the fact that many of these largely white male sheriffs were experienced law enforcement officers, providing them an advantage over candidates lacking the same background.

Near where I live in Florida, as a sheriff, it is beneficial to have thick skin and an outsized personality. In Nevada, I had the good fortune of spending time with Eureka County Sheriff Jesse Watts. His everyday duties are different than the eight sheriffs I know at home. Covering an area the size of Connecticut, with not much more than a dozen deputies, involves adaptive thinking. Everyday, a call can come in that requires a code three response of over 150 miles. Everyone should visit there at least once in their life. I’m looking forward to visiting again.

It is remarkable how few sheriffs are threatened by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. In my academy class, hires from the sheriff’s office and those from my police department were in an unending discussion of how ‘rough and ready’ deputies were compared to the formal manner of city officers.

Sheriff's offices, by necessity, empower their deputies to employ necessary force with fewer restrictions compared to municipal law enforcement agencies. This is crucial for maintaining order and safety in vast jurisdictions where emergency assistance can be many minutes away.

Despite this, sheriff's offices are less likely, in fact almost never, the subject of Department of Justice (DOJ) pattern and practice investigations.

Notably, courageous leadership is present, with loyalty to the deputies and a strong message to those who come down the road with a list of fabricated grievances. They are told to get back on that road and not look back.

This is also why sheriff’s offices that function as full service law enforcement agencies almost approach never the point of failure that municipal agencies are facing head on today.

Please keep all law enforcement officers in your prayers!