This is inevitable. Even before the defund the police movement, departments across the country had police shortages where for every 5 officers they needed, they only had 3.
Things have gotten worse regardless of which side of the debate you're on
I was just expecting AI and robots to take over ala Robocop and Little Sister cameras everywhere. I did not foresee the gig companies like Bannerman and Citizen doing it, but here we are.
Drones are cheap, people are expensive. The current labor shortage isn’t going away, and everyone is going to have to make more use of automation to get by. Lots of police departments are flush in cash and yet still can’t hire enough new police officers (and when/if they compete on salaries, which they can’t because of union rules, it would just be a bidding war for a limited number of people who want to do that kind of job).
No. Police forces have had shortages since the mid 2000s. It’s gotten worse since then. It’s been a regular news feature since about 2010. It’s old news
It’s the natural move and the eventual evolution of major US metros suffering from crime. As police forces continue to dwindle with less and less new recruits, local governments may not have a choice of disallowing surveillance when it’s a tool to help mitigate crime. Even before BLM and defund the police movements, on average US police departments only had 60% of the officers needed to effectively maintain order.
Less people want to become a police officer because the pay doesn’t match both the physical and legal threats of the job. Constant overtime and local government’s bad habit of seeing every problem as a nail that could be solved by police has exacerbated the problem.
Where I live we have trouble training enough new police officers to keep the number of officers stable or slightly increasing. I can't imagine that replacing the whole force is possible in the short term.
Not surprising. I would imagine that if the number of officers needed is shrinking it's a pretty bad environment for survival. There's a need for good people everywhere, and people will naturally gravitate to more gain, less pain.
I wonder if there's a demonstrable correlation between level of police funding and support for such initiatives. In the UK's public sector there is definitely a strong drive for automation, but it does kind of coincide with austerity and drastic cuts in police services.
Hiring more police is not a problem, as long as you fire all the old dysfunctional police, and get rid of all the mechanisms that kept dysfunctional police in place for all those years.
If you fire tons of bad cops and you want good cops, you're going to have to hire them.
Your linked article says they're struggling to hire enough cops. This seems like the opposite of winding down a department; they're attempting to grow.
"That has not happened. Every place in the Bay Area has sufficient numbers of police and firemen. There is no place that has run out of them. Trouble hiring is not the same as no hiring.
"
San jose is not only at something like half force, they know it will drop even further before they can make it better. You can google the numbers exactly if you want them, but they are really bad.
The challenge for San Jose police is that more officers are leaving than being recruited, as other cities continue to offer higher pay and better benefits. That makes it difficult to keep the ranks at full authorized strength of 1109 officers.
When you factor in disabilities and military leave, the department is roughly 200 officers below that. And it's expecting to lose well over 100 sworn officers this year from resignations and retirements. "
(Note: Can't handle patrol needs, expected to be down 300. IIRC, they are actually down significantly more than that down. They literally can't handle patrol needs right now at all, even with overtime)
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The outlook of catching up is not looking good. A new police academy class starting Tuesday has a capacity of 60. The city made 29 job offers. But five took jobs elsewhere and one was a no-show. That will mean the class will have 23 recruits plus one who was previously hired. "
(note the timing of these articles has shown that what they are doing is not helping)
"O'Connor points the finger at chronic understaffing - caused by the department's failure to fill 400 vacant positions - for requiring some firefighters to put in hundreds of hours of OT a year.
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400 vacant positions does not sound like "sufficient numbers" to me.
etc
You keep making handwaving assertions to support your point, while i am providing actual data.
Please provide actual data. I have shown they often have 30-40% under what they are supposed to. This has gotten worse as housing prices have increased. That is not "sufficient". You cannot handwave this away as simply saying "it's trouble hiring".
As far as i know, plenty of places in the bay area that are expensive do not have sufficient numbers of police, firemen, or paramedics. They are having significant trouble recruiting precisely due to cost to live vs pay. The places that are not expensive are not having these problems.
If you want to argue this is simply not true, please provide any evidence instead of just saying "no, you are wrong".
In theory new technology can do all sorts of magical things. In reality the San Jose Police department is broke and can't even afford to hire enough officers to comply with federal guidelines. Where is the funding going to come from?
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/675359781/americas-growing-co...
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national-politics/the-...
It will only get worse.
I wonder if AI and robotics will need to be used in the future assuming that the police shortage trend continues or gets even worse?
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