First they create the problem, then they report on it...

 

Police departments in several U.S. cities with the highest crime rates reported workforce shortages heading into the final months of 2021, as forces wrestle with the challenges of both bolstering and retaining their forces. 

In most cases, the shortfall did not occur suddenly, but instead demonstrates a rising trend that police departments across the nation have identified over the last several years.

Jim Burch, the president of the nonpartisan and nonprofit National Police Foundation (NPF), told Newsweek that police departments are experiencing issues with recruitment and retention. Recruitment has been a problem "for many years," Burch said.

The NPF does not have data that draws specific correlations between police workforce strength and crime numbers in specific U.S. cities, Burch said, but law enforcement officials in several major cities have in recent months raised concerns about staffing numbers.

Those concerns come at a time when reports of organized retail smash-and-grab robberies have dismayed many Americans. Though significant attention has been focused on retail thefts in California due to a handful of high-profile incidents in the Los Angeles and Bay Area communities, retail industry leaders have told Newsweek those incidents are representative of a nationwide trend.

"I think what is a little bit different about it today is, we have a continuing recruitment—I'll call it a crisis. But at the same time, we have an attrition problem," he said.

Ask yourself - would you want your

 kid to be a cop these days?