Police Recruiting Is a Problem Across the Nation

Shreveport police have been struggling to recruit officers and the Caddo Sheriff tells KEEL News he has been having trouble finding officers who want to serve.

Shreveport is down by about 100 officers and only 29 folks have qualified to be in the next academy class. The Caddo Sheriff's Office is down by at least 75 deputies according to Sheriff Steve Prator. But our area is not the only community facing this problem.

The Associated Press reports this is a national problem:

Law enforcement agencies across the country experienced a wave of retirements and departures and are struggling to recruit the next generation of police officers in the year since George Floyd was killed by a cop. And amid the national reckoning on policing, communities are questioning who should become a police officer today. Nationwide protests and calls for reforming and defunding the police, as well as the coronavirus pandemic, took their toll on officer morale. New research on nearly 200 law enforcement agencies conducted by the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum and provided to The Associated Press shows the rate of retirements at some departments rose 45% compared with the previous year.