War on terror harms police recruiting
High salaries in the private sector and reserve call-ups drain local police forces; Springfield police department finds itself thirty-five officers short of authorized strength
Uh, oh. With the federal government’s homeland security budget exploding, with private contractors offering high dollar salaries for security consulting services, and with the high levels of reserve call-ups, local police forces — those truly on the front line in the war on terror — are having a hard time meeting their recruitment goals. So reports KY3 news in Springfield, Illinois, which says that the local police department is thirty-five men short of its authorized strength. “What we know is that fewer people are applying to become law enforcement officers,” said Chief Lynn Rowe, noting that since the war in Iraq began, the Springfield Police Department has been down as many as fourteen officers and that each lost officer costs the city tens of thousands of dollars in training costs. Overtime, he said, is only a stopgap measure. “We can only afford so many hours of overtime because, at some point, police officers need time to rest.”
-read more in this KY3 report
