I work in a very pro LE community. My agency NEVER used to have problems filling open positions. We had a ready supply of qualified people with applications on file waiting for an opening.  Well, we seem to have finally reached that point where we are having a hard time filling spots. We had a very restrictive tattoo policy we lifted just to get more qualified people. We hire both for patrol as well as the jail. We have plenty of applicants for the jail but when they see an applicant who looks especially promising, the applicant gets asked if he/she would consider a patrol position instead. It used to be people were chomping at the bit to get out of the jail and onto patrol. Now.....jail applicants are like “thanks but I’d rather work in the jail”. We get very few people from the jail applying for patrol anymore.

Our largest city (best paid agency around but not a great agency to work for) is down 10% of their work force. They can’t hire enough to fill an academy class (they have their own academy). This is an agency that used to have 600+ applicants every time they opened up the hiring process. Our smaller cities are running  20-75% short of their authorized staffing.

And this is in an area that still supports us.


So.....how’s it looking in your part of the country?

I am in central Missouri.  Our area is still very pro law-enforcement, pro red white and blue, and generally pro freedom. You may have seen our sheriff on CNN, being attacked for the large gatherings occurring in our county, as well as the lack of mask restrictions.  I work for the county, and I've been in the jail not quite a year. I was selected to go to the Academy next month, so I will be starting the part-time, year-long Academy and continuing to work at the jail while I do so.  This academy is a local academy, put on by our county through the Missouri Sheriffs Association.  Anyone can attend of course, but it tends to be a breeding ground for deputies for our county.  I've been told, that I don't know if it is accurate, that typically 20 students are required for an Academy class run.  Talking about it with coworkers, I've been told that other examples of these small local academies have been shut down due to lack of students.

I have a friend who is with the highway patrol. He said that there used to be a significant line and waiting list to get into the highway patrol academy.  If I remember correctly, when he was hired into the Patrol 20 years ago, there were about 1500 applicants and he had to wait several years for acceptance.  I believe he said the applicant pool dropped into the low hundreds after Ferguson. I don't know if it is accurate or not, but he said last year they hired every qualified applicant, and are now having difficulty meeting their quotas. They have lifted some tattoo policies and such as well.

Our road department is already eyeing me to go out on the road but I don't have a big desire to do so.  Typically all of the deputies in the jail are itching to go to the road. Or all of the Academy applicants in the jail. Our jail typically does not keep deputies for very long, before they are sent to the road. My shift supervisor is the only floor level person who is a deputy.  So when we get a deputy in the jail, we typically know they are just there for a holding period until a slot opens up on the road. And that usually happens within a couple of months.

I am 44, with three kids. My time for needing an adrenaline rush has long passed.  I was already offered a shift supervisor position at the Jail, and would likely have taken that had they not also given me the option of going to the Academy.  They usually select 2 to 3 jail employees a year to attend a part-time Academy, and continue working full-time at the jail. It's considered a bit of a privilege, I guess.  Our jail lieutenant and captain are both nearing retirement, and word is that they will be leaving soon. That will cause some openings for a few folks to move up. My existing Corporal, our shift supervisor, is already being readied to move up into The Sgt/over watch position.  So I suspect they see this change coming sooner than later.  I have been informed that I am a strong candidate can say to consider movement into an admin vacancy, when they open up. However, when you move between branches (road, jail, transport/court security, etc), You lose your rank and such. So once you work your way up the ladder on one branch a little bit, you're kind of locked into that branch.

My goal would be something like detective, and that may require some time on the road in order to do so. If that is the case, I will spend some time on the road.  Unlike most of the guys in the Academy, and most of the deputies hired by our department, and essentially all of the young kids come in carrying a blue flame, that is not really my goal. I would only want to go to the road if it is a prerequisite for something else.

Given their choice, they like to have all new deputies spend about a year in the jail, or spend some time in the jail prior to going to Academy. I now understand how that jail experience is beneficial to dealing with people on the road.  We also have ridiculously high turnover, both in the jail and on the road. I suspect that is because we are the lowest paying departments in the area, even though we have one of the largest / wealthiest tax bases.  We Seem to be a steppingstone for a lot of people on the way to hire pay at a different county or municipality.

TLDR version;  Things seem to be normal in my small, central Missouri community. However, word is getting around that there are few enough applicants that some of the local academies are being shut down. My friend in the whole patrol told me they are flat out hurting for applicants. He said it dropped seriously after Ferguson, and is taking a huge drop again in the past 18 months or so.

No one wants these jobs.  There was an agency that recently had only 17 applicants for a lateral transfer.  The city is wealthy and is pretty much one of the better communities to live in.  
We had zero applicants for our last try.  Zero.  We pay decent.  Not as well as the other place.

Here in MN we have had a massive plummet in applicants.  15 years ago there were anywhere from 500-1500 applicants, depending on the agency.  One agency, Eden Prairie, paid the highest in the state and would have 1,200 applicants for just one or two openings.  Now we have agencies that can’t even get enough to fill an academy class.  Minneapolis PD has had so much attrition that they went from 850 down to 680.  That’s a 20% attrition rate.  They recently sent out job offers to 32 applicants for their academy next year, and supposedly only 18 accepted the job offer.  St.Paul PD had to extend their hiring deadline twice because they had less than 100 applicants for 20-25 academy spots.  Minnesota State Patrol switched from the Cooper Test to the 2000m row test at 60% for their physical agility test, and had to give a massive raise to their troopers.  For the first time in as long as I can remember, smaller agencies are now offering hiring bonuses and incentives for laterals.

Quality of applicants has also fallen. 1/2 of our recent hires have quit within 3 weeks or less of starting (and it was a good thing they quit...they will not be missed).

I am also in Minnesota, but with no law enforcement experience at all. Is this a good time to get into a law enforcement career?

Was talking about this with my friend last weekend.  Recruiting has plummeted.  The quality of candidates has likewise dropped.  All agencies in the area experiencing this.

Yes and no. Yes it’s pretty easy to get hired now as long as you can pass a background check. No in the sense that you do NOT want to work for an agency in a large liberal city. Personally, I wouldn’t even consider working for a municipality. Been there....done that. Won’t go back. Sheriffs office only IMO. Of course, that assumes you have a good sheriff to work for. Pay likely won’t be as high but work satisfaction will be much higher.

Back in the late 1960's, early 1970's, there was a similar difficulty getting people to go into law enforcement.  The government instituted the Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP).   The LEEP program would give student loans to those interested in a career in law enforcement.   After graduation, if a person who took the LEEP money went into a qualifying law enforcement position, the government would deduct 20% of the LEEP loan value per year.  So if you worked in a qualifying position for 5 years, your loan would be forgiven.

It seemed to work out well for both the government and those who took the LEEP money.  Perhaps the government needs to revisit such a program.

I see this a fair amount, and I'm curious "why"?  I work in the jail at the Sheriff's Office.  I'll be starting the academy next month.  I know we've lost several road deputies and recent academy graduates (who worked in the SO at the jail while in academy) to neighboring municipalities.  The SO is my only LEO experience...I'm curious what is different at a municipality.  I can understand why large urban areas would suck, but does your warning even apply to smaller, rural areas?

In ALL municipalities you do not work for the police chief. You work for the elected city leaders. The same elected city leaders that likely know nothing about LE. They hold your fate in their hands. They could decide to terminate you and the police chief can’t save you. A sheriff can piss off a lot of people and maintain his position. A police chief can only piss off a very few people. For example, the city agency I worked for....the city council had 5 members. It took a 2/3 majority to remove a police chief.....so 3 people. That’s it. Lots of people are bitching about how police departments in big cities are ignoring ANTIFA’s crimes but focusing on conservatives. I agree it’s frustrating BUT that is 100% coming from the city elected leaders. It’s not the police chief who is calling the shots. The chief becomes the scape goat for everyone (something liberals and the so called conservatives on this site have in common) but in reality, it’s 100% on the elected leaders of those cities. The police chief’s power comes from the elected leaders.

The sheriff is different. He/she is elected. So, his power and authority is directly given to him by the people and he is directly answerable to the people. The county government elected leaders often try to control the sheriff by controlling his money but in jurisdictions where certain taxes directly go to the sheriffs office, the county government can’t even control how that money is spent. So, you are answerable to the sheriff and he answers to the citizens. The county government can tell the sheriff they want someone terminated and the sheriff can refuse and they have little to no recourse.

There are some weird deviations from the above info in some large cities but the above info applies to most sheriffs. You can find good cities to work for but they are few and far between.

I have seen the politics at both municipalities and sheriffs offices and I can say with certainty, it’s usually worse at municipalities. There are politics everywhere but it’s worse at most municipalities.

There certainly are bad sheriffs out there who are liked by the public but hated by their employees but those in LE in the area know who those sheriffs are and they usually have high turnover

Sheriffs offices often have nice side benefits that few cities have like take home cars and a large jurisdiction to work in. Our pay isn’t quite as high as the best paid local agency but our side benefits almost make up the difference. Where the major difference is to me is the job satisfaction. I like going to work and I work with really good people. The best paid agency locally has a ton of disgruntled and unhappy employees (including some relatives of mine)

Many people who leave for “greener pastures” ONLY look at the hourly rate of pay and base their employment decisions on only that. In my opinion that’s a huge mistake. My agency lost a decent officer to the local large agency. That officer left mostly for financial reasons (pay and family health insurance). That officer grips constantly how much it sucks at the better paid agency. We cross paths sometimes and he is always very jealous of us.

I love working at my SO. The sheriff knows who he is responsible to and knows how handle the county commission.  

Most of the municipalities in our county have to do heavy traffic enforcement just to have a budget.

We don't have that problem at the Sheriff's Office.

Rhetorical question.........

Why would the federal government, under Biden, whose party wants to defund the police, want to do anything to increase LE applicants?

It's a yes and no.  It really depends on your desire to be a cop.  When people ask me about any advice for going into law enforcement, I typically say "Don't".  The atmosphere today is horrible and if you have other means to make a lucrative living, or other areas you excel at, or are even remotely on fence about doing this job, go do something else.  I'm halfway to retirement, so I don't have an option.  If I were a new rookie with a couple years on, I'd be looking for a new line of work.  15 years ago I would have done this job for free, but now I'm at the point where I don't do jack for my agency unless I'm getting paid, and I do the minimum necessary to not get noticed by admin or get fired.  

How much you like being a cop depends heavily on what kind of person you are and what agency you work for.  In all honesty, my job is pretty damn easy and I get paid well for it, so I'm not going to bed every night losing my mind about how the county is full of dirtbags or wondering why 90% of the people I arrest are getting released without bail.  

Minneapolis, St Paul and Duluth are extremely leftist and anti-cop.  The Hennepin and Ramsey county governments and prosecutors are anti-cop, and Washington and Dakota counties are creeping that way.  Rochester (home of Mayo Clinic), St Cloud and Mankato are going downhill fast.  Middle and outer-ring suburbs are still pretty pro-police, but the problem is that many of them are still in counties that are anti-cop, or are turning anti-cop.  There are still some counties on the edge of the metro that are strongly cop-friendly, like Anoka, Sherburne, Wright, Carver, Isanti, Chisago and Scott.  As you get farther away from the metro or the college towns, you get more cop friendly (except that tribal PDs. DO NOT do that).  Unfortunately, the farther you get away from the major cities, the lower the pay and opportunities, and the slower the pace.

MN has a wife beating AG with Keith Ellison, who is openly an anti-cop activist.  He's doing his damnedest to criminally charge any cop he can, and counties are taking that cue.  Hennepin and Ramsey have criminally charged more cops than all the other counties in the state collectively.  I have three partners that have been prosecuted over the last 5 years, and all three beat the charges handily because the criminal prosecutions were political by Hennepin County Drunken Village Idiot Attorney Mike Freeman.

I will say though that working for sheriff's offices in MN comes with politics.  There are some good sheriffs here like Anoka County Sheriff James Stuart, who is very conservative, very pro-business, has refused to enforce any state lockdown mandates, and is pro-2A.  Sheriff Kevin Torgerson of Olmstead County (Rochester) is extremely conservative, very pro-2A, and strongly supported by his deputies.  The flip side is that you have political hacks as sheriffs in various jurisdictions, where they will be as big of a problem as a local department with a dickhead political bootlicker chief.  It's really a matter of what you want out of the job.

If Biden/Harris do take office, they're not going to be cop friendly.  I dealt with the feds during Obama's presidency.  I didn't during Trump's.  

People rip on the troopers, but MN State Patrol just got an 8% pay increase this year, with more coming the next couple years.  They have a good command staff with their chief trooper, Col. Matt Langer.  Troopers were the only ones that were allowed to kick ass and take names in the riots without restriction from politicians.  They just got the biggest budget increase in their history, and they're going to be hiring a lot in the near future.  

I will say that if you're set on being a cop, it's the best time for it because the hiring pool is almost empty.  We are getting very few applicants, so the competition is pretty light for applicants.  

Just have to decide what kind of agency you want to work for.  If you have questions tankerboi, feel free to PM me.  I can be more forthcoming about what I know outside of the public forums, and I can offer some insight or answers.

The politicians in my county view the sheriff as just another department head, no different than the guy in charge at the highway department or DSS. There are no funds that come directly to the agency here, so in the times when we had a CLEO the politicians hated, they'd choke our budget
They've been trying to get the voters to approve having a n appointed sheriff for two decades now, claiming that having an elected sheriff is a popularity contest resulting in poor administrators
They've tried to bid out our services but the state gave them a price that was twice what they were paying us.
They've finally gutted us by getting a puppet who dances to their tune elected. He doesn't like me, and while I didn't have any ill will towards him prior to his campaign, I resent his willingness to be their puppet and drive this agency over a cliff in the name of political correctness

The way county leaders try to control the sheriff is to control his money. An elected sheriff has a lot of options and if he is liked by the public, he simply appeals to the public who in turn, if they are worth a shit, vote out those who seek to control the money in return for agency control. Weak sheriffs just roll over and take it.

Taxes that are specifically for LE can’t be controlled by the county leaders and they hate it. Some will refuse to support any publicly voted on LE taxes specifically to try to keep the sheriff under their control.

That’s why, if you have a good elected sheriff, it’s important to support him/her (meaning the public needs to support a good sheriff) There are political battles many are forced to fight that you may have no idea of. If your elected sheriff is good and has public support, he/she will have a much easier time dealing with the politics.

Unfortunately, there are bad sheriffs out there who are just as bad to work for as bad police departments. There are also good municipalities out there to work for but in today’s times, you are unlikely to find a good one in liberal areas. It’s sad.

I was just reading about this earlier.  I knew about it, but apparently, over the years it has been stored away somewhere.....


Interest is terrible compared to 6-8 years ago.  I used to say we would start by scraping the bottom of the barrel once they started weeding out applicants. Now we are tipping the barrel over and seeing what is in the dirt underneath it. Even some of the very wealthy towns around me are having problems.  They pay very well, have low crime, and people still just are not interested.  

Struggling to get really good new hires is an understatement.

I suspect it will change for the better in the years ahead but it’s probably quite a few years away. The public is largely stupid and fickle (hell probably 1/3 of the members on this site are stupid and fickle) and currently there is a huge number of Americans who are all for releasing criminals in their deluded efforts to “reduce crime” and defunding their local departments. The resulting crime spike (which we are already seeing) will be impressive. Eventually the public will have enough and just like in the 90s, we’ll see the public demand more enforcement and incarceration and we’ll then see crime fall again. Until then, the honest law abiding members of the public are gonna have to ride this out. If I lived in a moderate to high crime area, I’d be looking for a place to move to to reduce my exposure and would then also be securing my place as well as possible.

My main concern is departments who are lying on their crime stats to keep crime stats artificially low. The largest city in my county has been lying on their crime stats for the last 5+ years and the amazing thing is....it’s common knowledge and still no one cares.

Having worked for both SO and PD, I would argue that the quality of the HMFIC is more important than the politics of city vs county. A politician at the top versus a cop's cop is a far more important determinant in quality of life.

There's another element worth considering, too...work environment. In a city, you tend to work more closely with more officers. In the county you tend to be by yourself more, with less cooperation/teamwork/camaraderie. Obviously that depends on the squad and the guys, and isn't a total black and white difference, but I've definitely seen the difference. When your patrol area is 2 square miles with 3 or 4 officers sharing that space, versus 200 square miles (or more) with only one other guy...it's a very different experience. And if your agency is perpetually running at 60-70% staffing levels, your call volume, stress levels, and overall quality of life all sick. Getting turned down over and over for training, transfers, or vacation because the manpower shortage is too great leads to early burnout.

Where I'm at now has had lots of turnover, but generally not due to the agency itself. Family changes, career changes, that sort of thing. The flip side is that we've hired a *lot* lately, and the quality of the new guys has been surprisingly high. Close to 30% of the agency is basically new to law enforcement, and yet the guys I see are almost all pretty good and level-headed...they aren't mouth-breathing morons stumbling in the door, like some areas seem to be seeing.

I don’t really disagree overall but maybe minor disagreement. A good sheriff is critical for a SO but not so much for a PD. A great police chief will always be hamstrung by a bad city council. A good combo is a good police chief who works for a good city council. A bad police chief with a good city council isn’t good but usually the city council will see they have a bad chief and get rid of him/her.

A sheriff has a lot more freedom to run his/her agency as he/she wants. A police chief always has to please the city elected leaders.

In my experience, morale is higher and turnover is usually lower in a SO. That’s not always true but from what I’ve seen its usually better in a SO than a PD. But, like everything, there are exceptions to that. There are SOs I would never work for but there are also very few city PDs I would ever want to work for if given a choice.

I work in a very supportive, deep red conservative area.

We have several open positions but zero applicants.

Ah ha! Spring Hill, I knew it.

I see ads on Facebook all the time for law enforcement candidates. Maury, Bradley  and Grundy County. I saw one the other day for Tennessee Highway Patrol.

I am a Fed and one of my best friends is our division recruiter out here and she still has a lot of people expressing interest. I can’t comment though on the state and local level

I have a 'friend' that applied for a job with a federal agency almost a year ago. He completed the first three steps in the hiring process and then everything came to a complete halt. Almost a year to the day they call him up and ask if there is still interest, yes. He's now at the drug test followed by the background check then FLETC. It's a long process, 12 different steps but it looks like it's going to be a go.

Our Sheriff's Academy normally has 20+ students.  The minimum required for the class to go is 10.

Ours was on the rocks until the very last minute, but they decided to make it go with 6.  3 of us work in the jail for the county putting on the academy.  1 works in the jail at a different county.  Only 2 of them are "off the street".  Not sure which of the other academy programs they cancelled outright.

My friend is a Corporal with the MO highway patrol. He said everyone who applied for HiPo academy, and passed the background check, was admitted this year.  He said the admissions are normally just a fraction of the applicants.

The next 4 years aren't going to make LE MORE popular...

Gonna be kind of hard to meet min staffing when officers/deputies are leaving and no one is replacing them..............



https://www.lawofficer.com/lawsuit-training/


Tacoma, WA — The family of a slain sheriff’s deputy has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Pierce County. The lawsuit alleges that deputies are not safe at work due to inadequate staffing.The lawsuit was filed on behalf of deputy Daniel McCartney’s family and estate.

The lawsuit underscores the dangers of the “doing more with less” approach to law enforcement:

   “Pierce County knowingly put Deputy McCartney in the untenable position of responding without any immediate back-up,” part of the lawsuit said. “But for Pierce County’s failure to properly staff and train its deputies, Daniel McCartney would likely still be alive.”

The lawsuit seeks damages as well as court action to prevent inadequate staffing, according to KIRO7.

According to the lawsuit:

“Deputy Daniel McCartney, his estate, and his family do not want another family to suffer the loss of a father, husband, and leader like Deputy McCartney… They seek an order mandating sufficient staffing or other equitable relief that will prevent a repeat of another wrongful deputy death” (emphasis added).

Deputy McCartney, 34, was shot in the line of duty on January 7, 2018, while responding to a home invasion robbery. He is survived by his wife and three young sons.

The Sheriff’s Department said in a statement Friday: “Pierce County Sheriff’s Deputy Daniel McCartney was tragically killed in the line of duty after confronting armed men who were attempting to escape the scene of a home invasion robbery. The suspects responsible for Deputy McCartney’s murder were identified and arrested by our detectives, and later prosecuted and sentenced to prison.

“Because Deputy McCartney’s heroic death was not caused by his fellow deputies or the county he faithfully served, the lawsuit will be defended by Pierce County. The Sheriff’s Department continues to mourn the loss of Deputy McCartney.”

The lawsuit describes the lack of staffing provided at the division that Deputy McCartney was assigned. The county allocated 18 deputies for the Mountain Detachment, where McCartney worked, but only 15 were assigned there.
The dangers of 2 deputies covering 700 square miles

Also, the lawsuit highlighted the unrealistics and unsafe expectations that deputies had to endure:

   “For any given shift, Pierce County expected two deputies in D-10 (the Mountain Detachment) to patrol over 700 square miles — nearly 40% of Pierce County,” the lawsuit said. “Pierce County set minimum staffing levels approximately 16 or more years ago without increasing staffing minimums to correspond or keep pace with population growth.”

Unsafe distances, unsafe hours

Along with the great distances that deputies were expected to cover, the lawsuit also reveals how some departments permit unrealistic and unsafe work hours. Before the shooting, McCartney worked from 3 p.m. Jan. 6 to 6 a.m. Jan. 7. As the lawsuit states:

   “Deputy McCartney returned home and had less than six hours of sleep before he returned to work for his regular swing shift,” the lawsuit said. “When a fellow deputy became ill, and with the agency understaffed, Deputy McCartney agreed to cover the fellow deputy’s graveyard shift on January 7, 2018 to January 8, 2018. Unfortunately, Daniel McCartney never made it home from that shift.”

The lawsuit goes on to allege: “Pierce County Sheriff’s Department knew or should have known it was putting deputies on patrol without hiring deputies into available positions, and without the number of deputies needed to patrol safely. As a result, deputies, like Daniel McCartney, were forced to work double shifts with very little sleep.”
How the tragedy unfolded…

When McCartney was dispatched to the home invasion it was in a district next to his, an area “likely not as familiar to him as the deputies assigned” there, the lawsuit said. The home was known for drug trafficking.

After he arrived McCartney chased two men who ran, radioed that shots had been fired and then was silent.

On the way to the scene, a sergeant “ordered Deputy McCartney’s mic to be ‘opened’ so that Deputy McCartney could be heard across the communication channels,” the lawsuit said. The sergeant “learned later that the ‘open mic’ feature promised with Pierce County Sheriff’s Department’s new radios would work only by clearing the channel of all other radio traffic rather than allowing deputies to hear simultaneous communications.”

When back-up deputies arrived, they found McCartney with a gunshot wound to his neck. He later died at a local hospital.

“On the night Deputy McCartney died, it is believed there were 12 deputies on duty, plus one sergeant, to cover the entire 1,806 square miles in Pierce County Sheriff’s coverage area – or one deputy for every 150 square miles – or the equivalent of one deputy to cover the entire city of Seattle – alone,” the lawsuit said.

The Sheriff’s Department needed 40 more deputies, 12 to 18 more sergeants, and three to seven more lieutenants, not accounting for “the 25% of deputies historically unavailable due to leave, vacancies and training, or contracted coverage for Edgewood and University Place,” the lawsuit alleges.

“Pierce County knew the Sheriff’s Department was sufficiently understaffed and that as such, patrol deputies were not safe,” the lawsuit said. “… In 2009 and again in 2018, prior to Deputy McCartney’s death, consultants submitted comprehensive reports on Pierce County’s short staffing. One of the consultants reported ‘there are times when only one officer is available for a call, which, depending on the call, can be unsafe.’”

Two Mountain Detachment deputies had been ambushed previously, and one had died, the lawsuit said.

“At the time of Deputy McCartney’s death, records show that the department did not have a training plan to ameliorate the danger of short staffing; training records were poorly tracked; training budgets were limited; and management and supervisory training were not consistent,” the lawsuit said.

“Pierce County’s Council should have left staffing priorities to the elected Sheriff and Pierce County’s Council should have appropriated monies to bring staffing to sufficiently safe levels,” the lawsuit said. “Alternatively, Pierce County’s Council should have reconstructed its law enforcement obligations so that staffing was sufficiently safe.”

McCartney served in the U.S. Navy, and then for six years as a police officer in Hoquiam. He applied to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department in 2014, and was hired.

At 44 with three kids I would just stay put.

I know nebraska and iowa are always begging for help on the state patrol.

I just realized I'm retiring from the sea.

I wonder what's next?

I'm a spry 70 YO guy.

This looks like just the right time to put in for work as a policeman!

Seems practically every department is hiring!

Welcome to just about any rural agency

Walmart probably needs door receipt checkers

The tragedy is Pierce County includes the suburbs of Tacoma which also is commuter burbs for Joint Base Lewis-McChord and massive commuters to Renton, Seattle and Bellevue. So they should have a decent tax base for covering the Sheriff’s Office properly. But I imagine the yoots near Tacoma neighborhoods soak up 90% and leave the rural area scraping by.

If the are going to defund the department or demoralize them into quitting then they should pull back patrols to safe zones they can cover and let the voters know they are abandoning 60% of the county.

I had no idea you were older than me...   (63)