Police shortages: An entire Minnesota force quitting is part of a wave of staffing troubles hitting departments nationwide
Reza Estakhrian
- The entire police force of Goodhue, Minnesota, resigned over pay disputes with the city last week.
- Similar mass resignations have happened in forces across the country, especially in rural areas.
- With officers resigning and few recruits, some forces are lowering standards for new officers.
Last week, the entirety of Goodhue Police Department resigned over their $22-an-hour salary.
The department served Goodhue, Minnesota, a town with just over 1,000 people, according to the town's website. Their hourly rate is far lower than $34.32 — the mean officer pay in the US, according to data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
The department's police chief, one full-time officer, and five other employees resigned by Friday last week, according to NBC News.
It's not the first time that an entire police department has quit at the same time — in 2022, there were multiple cases where mass resignations occurred, many in rural areas.
In Springfield, Colorado, according to KKTV, the entire police force quit, and the Baca County Sheriff's Office took over operations in the county. Reporting from WSAZ said the chief resigned for "personal reasons," and two of the officers resigned to take positions at other police departments.
In another resignation en masse, the police force of Kenly, North Carolina, quit together in July of 2022. It came just two months after the town hired a Black woman, Justine Jones, as their town manager, according to previous reporting from Insider. Though Jones was voted in unanimously by the council, officers alleged to CNN that she created a "hostile work environment."
Another occurred in Melbourne, Florida, according to Florida Today, where a six-member force resigned after conflicts with the town commission — conflicts that the department and the Melbourne mayor refused to elaborate on.
The resignations fit into larger trends of police staffing troubles, which have only increased in recent years.
According to 2022 reporting from CNN, some agencies across the country, such as those in Dallas, Texas, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, were all down hundreds of officers, leaving remaining staff scrambling to fill gaps.
The Police Executive Research Forum said departments reported almost 50% more resignations in 2022 than they did in 2019. The report concluded that police agencies country-wide were losing officers faster than they could hire them.
Another report from PERF noted some departments lowered their standards for officers in 2020 and 2021 in an attempt to boost eligible applicants. Seven agencies, the PERF reported, lowered their minimum education requirements, and at least 13 eased guidelines restricting previous marijuana usage.
The police departments of Kenly, Goodhue, Springfield, and Melbourne did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.