Police departments are using money to fight understaffing : NPR

When Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara took over the department in 2022, he says it was like walking into a funeral parlor.

“People weren’t even talking to each other,” he says. “A lot of members were openly telling me, ‘Yeah, if somebody asked me, they’re thinking about becoming a cop, I told them, no way, don’t come here. Everybody hates us. Everyone is leaving. Go anywhere else but Minneapolis.’”

After all, this is the police force where an officer murdered George Floyd. O’Hara says that took a toll. He estimates the department today is staffed 40% below what it was in 2020.

Across the U.S. since 2020, police forces in major cities have shrunk. In response, many are giving officers large pay boosts. But many say it takes far more than money to draw people to policing and keep them there.

How many police officers is enough?

According to the Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF, the number of officers employed by large agencies is around 5% lower than it was four years ago.

In Minneapolis, O’Hara says residents experience the effects of having fewer investigators and fewer officers on the street.

“It means much longer response times for certain things,” he says. “Doesn’t mean that we’re forgetting about cases, but it does mean we are prioritizing.”

He says officers have less time for check-ins and less direct contact with community members; They rely more now on single-officer cars, and there’s a fear that calling for backup could take longer than it used to.

Typically, city officials calculate the number of officers needed to deem a department fully staffed based on a variety of factors including population levels, crime trends and budget allocations.

But there is no magic number, and the evidence is mixed on whether more officers – or more money spent on policing – predicts crime rates, researchers say.

Ben Grunwald, a law professor at Duke University, says not enough is known to say definitively what the best number of police officers actually is.

“If you talk to police chiefs and law enforcement experts, they’ll tell you we need more officers because officers help reduce violent crime and help other problems with communities,” Grunwald says. “On the other hand, you can talk to activists who will tell you, ‘No, we don’t need more officers. What we need is fewer officers because police officers cause lots of social harm to communities.’”

‘Departments have had to try to incentivize.’

Chuck Wexler, executive director of PERF, says large agencies struggling to recruit and retain police is a “sign of the times.”

“The challenge of American policing right now is you have more resignations and retirements and less people who want to become police officers,” he says. “So departments have had to try to incentivize.”

In at least 20 major U.S. cities, money is the primary incentive. Thousands of police officers across the country have received large pay boosts since the start of 2023.

New cadets in Austin receive a $15,000 signing bonus. In Washington, D.C., the hiring bonus is $25,000.

In May, the Seattle City Council approved a 23% increase to the starting salary of its officers. In Kansas City, the 2024-25 budget included a 30% increase in police salaries.

Earlier this month, the Minneapolis City Council approved a 22% raise over the next three years for officers, a pay bump that will cost the city an extra $9 million.

Critics in Minneapolis are angered by the increases to police wages, when the department has cost the city tens of millions of dollars in police misconduct payouts. O’Hara says that’s exactly why they need higher pay.

“If we want quality policing, we’re going to have to pay quality wages. It is just an extremely difficult job and there are just not people interested in this,” O’Hara says. “The pay, I think, is not the only thing, but it’s an essential component of being able to turn this thing around.”

Jill Snider, a retired New York City police officer, agrees.

“We chose to be law enforcement officers. People choose to be teachers, choose to be nurses. You know what you’re getting into when you do it. But then you’re not always happy with the paycheck when you get it,” says Snider, who is also a policy director at the R Street Institute, a think tank that promotes limited government.

‘It would have taken quite a bit of money to get me to stay.’

But just like there’s no magic number for how many police officers a city should have, the evidence that higher pay gets more people to become cops and stay in the profession is mixed at best.

“It isn’t all about money. It’s about quality of life,” Wexler says.

When the Los Angeles City Council voted to increase the starting salary of officers by 13% last year, the city’s police department reported an increase in applications.

A 2024 study also found that higher salaries made some college students more open to applying for the job. But it noted that nearly half of the surveyed students said there was “no chance” they’d apply, including many who had majored in criminal justice.

Another study from this year zeroed in on burnout and psychological distress as key reasons why officers leave. Compared to the general population, police officers are more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder. They’re also more likely to die by suicide.

“It’s honestly a lot of times not as much to do with the money. It’s a lot more to do with the frustrations around the job,” says Colin Whittington, a former officer in northern Virginia.

Whittington, who left the force in 2022 after seven years, says he felt unfairly treated for the actions of other officers.

“You will be cursed at, or sent nasty messages, or left notes in your cruiser for an incident that happened states away with officers who I never met, and being lumped into their actions, even though I always held myself to a really high standard,” he says.

Whittington now offers career counseling and also wrote a book to help police officers and other first responders considering a transition away from law enforcement.

Matt Rivers, a former officer in Urbana, Ill., left policing in 2017 after nine years. For him, it was job stress creeping into life at home.

“I just remember getting upset with the kids about something super minor, like they dropped a spoon in the kitchen or something like that. And I remember thinking, ‘This doesn’t feel like me,’” he says. “It would have taken quite a bit of money to get me to stay.”

‘Purpose is going to transcend money.’

There are some cities bucking the trend. In fact, according to PERF data, smaller departments have bounced back after a decline and have more officers now than they did in 2020.

In Bloomington, Minn., a suburb of nearly 90,000 people a few miles south of Minneapolis, the department is overstaffed.

“Bloomington was for sure my number one option. I’m from here. I played sports here. I care about this community a lot,” says Officer Devon Barnum, who is 23 years old and has been on the job less than a year.

On a recent afternoon patrol, he answered call after call: A tense dispute between a mom and son. A welfare check on a woman who didn’t show up for work. A traffic stop. A call to secure an apartment building.

“Every day is challenging,” Barnum says. “Obviously, I would say it’s an extremely stressful job, right? The things you see in this job … the average person doesn’t see them.”

He says more money couldn’t persuade him to leave for another police department.

“I’m not going anywhere. We have our community support. Our chief is awesome,” he says. “You don’t get into this job for money.”

To be clear, Bloomington has increased officer pay – by about 3% a year for the last few years. The city’s police chief, Booker Hodges, says he has no plans for anything more than that.

“I don’t fundamentally believe that paying people these incentives works,” he says. “I want people here who are here for a purpose, because purpose is going to transcend money … Purpose is going to keep people working. Purpose is going to get you through those tough times.”

Hodges is the city’s first Black police chief, and used to be president of the Minneapolis NAACP. He understands not everyone is going to like the police. He’s aiming instead for mutual respect, toward the community and also toward officers.

He says that makes for a positive work environment. Otherwise he says understaffing, which leads to lots of overtime shifts, becomes a vicious cycle.

“If you consistently have to work 16-hour days, one: how awake are you going to be, right? Two: How much quality time are you able to take to recharge and spend with your family, right? So are you your best person overall if you’re working that much? And the answer is no,” he says.

Hodges says you want the police that are out there to be healthy and happy, and not just in it for the money.