The US model of policing is foundering and I believe one reason is that we have more discrete law enforcement agencies than any other nation on earth (nearly 18,000 of them). Every single state, sometimes every city and county, makes up their own standards as they go along. I’m a pragmatist. I just want things to work, and I’m willing to see history, tradition, gored oxen and sacred cows hucked overboard if it rights the wallowing ship.
“That’s the way we’ve always done it” is the worst possible reason to keep doing something that doesn’t work. The way we’re doing things is not sustainable. It’s not fair to the officers who work for scattered and underfunded departments, and it’s not fair to the communities they serve, either.
All departments are struggling, but small departments aren’t just struggling with recruiting, retention and controversy: they’re disappearing like passenger pigeons. Each week brings new headlines about another department shuttering. Figuring out new ways to throw (mostly nonexistent) money at the problem is a losing proposition when the officers who work in these departments face obstacles from poor pay to a lack of childcare and housing.
Let’s talk about the problem, and then I’ll talk about radical overhauls that might just fix it.
Why are there so many small departments?
Three reasons: tradition, power and control.
This article about why Kentucky has so many counties explains it best (only Texas, Georgia and Virginia have more counties than Kentucky, even though it’s smaller than any of those states), but the short version is this — people want to live near each other, and, historically, no more than a day’s walk from their county seat.
Once each locality formed its own government and its own law enforcement, none of them wanted to give up any of that power. Independence and individuality are highly prized and fiercely protected in the US. The smaller the town, the more personally any perceived infringement is taken. Having its own law enforcement is one way to exercise local control.
It’s not possible for every single small town and county to run its own law enforcement agency. The tax base for a town of a few hundred, or even a few thousand, is insufficient to fund a modern law enforcement agency. Something has to give; staffing, training and accountability top the list.
What’s the problem with having so many departments?
Small agencies struggle to pay officers wages that allow them to work without needing extra jobs or overtime, and some departments are so small that they’re exempt from FLSA regulations that require them to pay overtime anyway.
Inadequate tax bases, archaic funding models, poor pay and mismanagement by cities and counties weigh heavily on the small departments that make up the majority of law enforcement. Tax bases that are inadequate to support realistic staffing encourages overreliance on unpaid reserves and part-time officers; they keep the budget down and allow employers to evade the costs of benefits even when officers are wounded in the line of duty. Where officers have no civil service or union protections, unethical administrators can mean inconsistent enforcement of laws, and officers unjustly fired when they cross the wrong boss, or even the wrong citizen.
Retirement and health benefits are unevenly applied, with the thin and sketchy parts mostly affecting officers who work for small agencies. One agency may offer a traditional pension, while another agency has a 401K instead. In some states, employers decide whether or not the department designates an officer’s work as “hazardous” for retirement purposes. If they decide not to (it’s cheaper not to), then the pension payout will be lower, no matter how much risk the officers actually face.
Even worse, small localities are permitted in some states to form “special” or private police departments. Those officers can be certified the same and face the same risks as other law enforcement, but be excluded from basics like survivor benefits if they die in the line of duty.
Short-staffed agencies have a hard time paying for even minimum standards of training, let alone advanced training, and have an even harder time getting officers to that training and then backfilling their shifts.
This is the richest country in the world, yet there are still officers who aren’t issued basic safety equipment, who drive unsafe vehicles and who haven’t had any training after the academy. Others are patrolling for up to a year before even attending an academy.
Places like Brookside, Alabama and Coffee City, Texas become bywords for corruption in part because there is incentive for small departments to maximize funding through fines and fees, and no mechanism for stopping it. Bad applicants like the notorious “Catfish Cop” wander to small departments and get hired even after being fired by other agencies. Lawsuits cost more than background investigations, yet a lack of standards means department after department will take the short-term savings and hope it doesn’t backfire.
Similar sketchy headlines from places like White Castle, Louisiana and Millersville, Tennessee heap criticism on the entire profession. Scandals arise in sheriff’s offices, too. Search for headlines from Clark County, Indiana, and it’s easy to see how a position that’s nearly untouchable can allow greed to flourish. A long investigation exposed historical practices in Alabama that incentivized sheriffs to get rich by (legally) pocketing money budgeted for inmate meals. In Rankin County, Mississippi, multiple deputies were convicted of torturing citizens, while the sheriff of more than 10 years claimed ignorance even though the group of dirty deputies was so notorious that they had a nickname: the Goon Squad. He’s still in office, after running unopposed last fall.
How could these problems be fixed?
There are possible solutions. There are no easy ones.
One would be consolidation, where multiple small localities combine resources to make a larger department. This has already happened in some places, with small departments unifying into larger ones. In others, small towns contract with a sheriff’s office or state police for local patrol services. Either can allow economies of scale and reduce redundancies in administration, dispatch, training and communications.
While never perfect, consolidation can alleviate obstacles particular to small towns and tiny budgets. No one will get everything they want, and the contract option won’t work for places without sheriffs, or where sheriffs don’t engage in patrol or criminal enforcement (Hawaii, Alaska, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware, for a start).
The other option is more radical: a single state police department for each of the 50 states similar to Australia’s policing model.
Australia and the United States share as many similarities as differences: a deep admiration for personal independence and rugged self-determination, enormous geographies and roots in English common law among them. In both nations, there are densely populated cities and sparsely populated wilderness and ranching areas with thousands of miles of coastline, where small communities both enjoy grand spaces and struggle with distance from resources.
Australia’s more limited resources (especially water) has limited its population, and it has only six states, but here’s the key: each state has its own police force responsible for enforcement of criminal law. “Council rangers” are employed by local governments to enforce local ordinances, civil matters, and minor infractions like animal and noise complaints, ensuring timely response to quality of life issues that don’t rise to criminal violations.
This means that Australian police officers in each state are effectively trained the same, equipped the same and compensated the same, no matter where they live and work. They all have access to the same retirement and health benefits. They all have the same rights and civil service protections, allowing for objective application of enforcement.
Officers who don’t like where they live and work may transfer to another location without wrecking their pay scale or PTO bank. If they prefer working in a small town, they can stay there. If they want more opportunities for special assignments (or if they’re burning out and need a change for a few years), they can apply for those without quitting their jobs.
Let’s answer the inevitable questions
Q: Won’t this mean less responsive local law enforcement?
A: No. Officers who want to work in small towns are likely to live in small towns, especially if they can find housing and the community is supportive. Whatever uniform they wear, they’re still your neighbors, the same as the game warden, highway patrol officer, or National Park ranger who lives there now.
If you mean, “But I can’t fire them when they don’t police the way I want them to,” you may have a point. There would still be a mechanism for citizen feedback, complaints and lawsuits. There just wouldn’t be a quick way to fire an officer because they arrested a city council member for drunk driving, or a judge’s kid for vandalism.
Q: Isn’t this unconstitutional?
A: No. There is no constitutional bar to standardized state policing. While the 10th Amendment is a high bar to federal officers enforcing local or state law without express permission from local governments, state police already exist and patrol rural and small towns in states like Alaska where there are no sheriffs. Where the office of sheriff is constitutionally established, state constitutions might have to be amended (hard, but definitely not impossible), or the duties of the office more clearly defined. In many states, sheriff’s offices already are expressly required to maintain jails and carry out civil process, but patrol and enforcing criminal law are extras growing out of tradition rather than statute.
Q: What benefit would there be to a system like this?
A: Two main benefits would be accountability, and standardization of hiring practices, training and enforcement of laws. Rural law enforcement would still be rural, with livestock, dust, mud and long distances from backup and medical care. Nevertheless, both officer and citizen would know exactly what are the expectations of both community and agency administration, and what are the avenues for recourse when standards are breached.
Standard access to pay, benefits, training and equipment, as well as promotional opportunities could slow the exodus of seasoned officers. Opportunities for specialty positions and changes of locale without penalty could alleviate burnout rates.
Q: How could this improve public confidence in policing?
A: Standardization of hiring requirements and processes would mean every citizen would know what kind of training every officer has, or that they passed a real background investigation and psychological evaluation. A single statewide law enforcement agency would also mean that officers who violate the public trust cannot just move to a department desperate enough to hire them despite criminal backgrounds. Deeper benches and better resources could mean fewer exhausted officers struggling alone with trauma exposures.
Q: Big agencies have problems too. How could this be an improvement?
A: Whittling down the numbers of departments means whittling down the number of times any particular problem (or officer) would have to be dealt with. Large agencies have generated their own scandals, but when they are discovered and addressed, it’s hard to ignore it or hide it. For example, a bad chief who is fired for conduct unbecoming in a very small department usually attracts little attention outside the local community, making it possible to migrate to another very small department. A corrupt chief in a larger department will absolutely make headlines. If they try to move on to another department, that also attracts attention from the news and the public. The problem becomes self-limiting.
Q: Wouldn’t this be hard to do?
A: Yes, definitely. It would be really, really hard.
Change is threatening. It threatens our sense of identity, our control and the comfort of the familiar. Talking about it makes people angry and defensive so we avoid it; nevertheless, a problem we won’t acknowledge can never be fixed. If all the conventional solutions have been tried and they’ve failed, the only solutions left are, by definition, unconventional.
