An entire police department in Minnesota has quit over a $22-an-hour pay… Learn More!
Which mean the small Minnesotan town may soon be without any local law enforcement after its entire police force handed in their resignation in protest of low wages.
Goodhue Police Chief Josh Smith submitted his resignation last week at a city council meeting in Goodhue, Minnesota, citing the city’s $22 an hour pay for officers… Continue Reading
Yeah, I live here, nothing has/will change by this. The sheriff’s office is going to take things over until they sort out the whole PD thing, and we’re a super tiny town, nothing will change.
Genuinely curious. Why does a tiny town even have a police department? Why doesn’t the sheriff handle it with the neighboring towns?
Honestly, beats me. I shouldn’t say I live in goodhue specifically either, I live in goodhue county. Zumbrota specifically, we also have our own PD too. Not sure the rational behind it. Goodhue has a population of like 1800 and zumbrota a population of like 3000. Maybe that’s big enough to warrant a PD, but I wouldn’t think so.
City politics aren’t really my thing, but, now that I’ve lived in this small town for a couple years, it’s becoming more crucial. So, maybe I’d have a better answer if I’ve lived here longer.
Like I said, I was mostly just curious. I’m in San Diego county. Typically here, you have sheriff everywhere except cities with large enough populations or high enough crime rates to justify an actual police department. IMO all the cities that are sheriff are FAR better than any that have PD to be in/live in.
Here in LA the sheriff’s deputies are gangsters
It’s location dependent, but LAPD isn’t any better. At least here in SD, the sheriffs that I’ve dealt with have all seemed to want to be good people, and tried to help.
Cut the police force in half. Now they all get $44 an hour!
Police don’t solve crime, really. They mostly pull people over for speeding.
I don’t think there would be a big impact because their jurisdiction is also covered by the county Sheriff’s office, and traffic related manners can be taken over by State troopers.
I actually live here! There’s hasn’t been an impact at all. It’s a really small town.
Why are there all these ridiculously tiny police forces in the USA?
Revenue-generation from traffic tickets, if the town is along a major highway.
In other cases, it’s usually because the towns are just so far away from anything else and you can’t always wait 45 minutes for a cop to drive out from the city.
Presumably it’s a small town with a small population, so it wouldn’t need a huge police department. Just enough to have someone on shift when needed.
My small town had a 2 man police department when I was growing up.
Most of their time was spent dealing with drunk drivers. It was a small town and there wasn’t mush else to do other than drink…
But why not pool resources and have one for a larger area (county, region, state, whatever)?
See the second part of my response, above.
The rural US is often very empty with long distances of pretty much nothing between towns. If those towns want a reliable, responsive police presence, they have to provide it themselves. Keep in mind that average population density is the US is about 1/4th of that in Europe… and it’s far lower than that when you get away from the North-East.
I’m interested whether it works better that way or how WA does it, with the largest non-federated area of jurisdiction and significantly lower population density for the most part - lower than every US state except Alaska.
I have no idea if either is more effective.
I’m just used to every little town having a handful of local cops to handle local matters because that’s how it was in the very rural area where I grew up. Neighboring towns and counties did coordinate with each other for assistance when needed, and meet daily to discuss ongoing matters (they tended to each have somebody gather at the same place for lunch), so I expect the overall effectiveness is pretty similar… it’s just independent departments working together while primarily covering their own local areas rather than one giant department directing them all across a large area.
Typically American law enforcement is structured like this
Municipal: Police officers County: Sheriffs State: State troopers Federal: Agents
Most law enforcement officers in the US are municipal they typically deal with everyday law enforcement challenges. Sherrifs often act as supplementary law enforcement in towns with no or small municipal departments. Troopers tend to regulate interstate traffic and cases that occur across town lines. Then federal agents typically handle matters that occur across state lines.
Generally the US government is structured in a manner to ensure power isn’t consolidated.
Nice; let’s do this everywhere then
oh no
