[willy]

A friend of mine says that some of the towns in Colorado including their state police have raised the hiring age to 45 because they cannot get people. :o Can you imagine starting these jobs at age 45 OMG.
I know a lot of it is they don't want to deal with the piss poor management that goes on in most towns. They don't pay very well in most places. For example top pay here in NJ can vary from 48 G's to 90 G's a year depending on the town for a patrolman. You cannot live in NJ for anything in the lower half of that range and would be struggling at the upper end. Average home price in all but a few run down areas is over 400G's. And in most places you would really like to raise a family the homes are in the 600G's area. And that is if it a smaller home.
The taxes are thru the roof and go up several hundred every year. I have a nice home on two acres, but it is not a new home or a fancy home. 14,000 a year in taxes. I am cheap compared to some.
They will never get top level people until they improve the compensation.
Also ours is one of the only professions where if you want to leave and go to another town or county to work it does not make a diffrence what training and experience you have you have to start at the bottom of the pay scale and seniorty again. Any other profession an experienced and trained person can take another job or position and improve his lot. Threfore there is no competition for the good cops, retention is high because they are stuck or loose tremendously to relocate.
Young people don't want to work long hours and thru the nights and holidays for a low wage scale. They want to be rich, have a job that cares about them, be able to advance within the organization or move to another job without starting over. The generation I came on with and the generation that was before me were veterans, used to tough times and screaming bosses etc. our tolerances for pain, aggravation sleep deprivation were well established before we were brought on. And it was an honored and respected profession.
If a police officer told my dad that I had been screwing off somewhere my a$$ was grass. No argument, no discussion. Today if you don't have video of your kid screwing off they look at you like you had two heads. And even if you do have video it is because of social pressures and the stress of being hounded by the police. ::)
Nowadays police are looked at by a large percentage of the population as an necessary evil.
New people coming on the PD's the past several years are very disenchanted much to early in their carreers for many of these and other reasons. I hope they can make it, the vast majority of the people I have known who wear a badge have good hearts and most care about the people they serve. Some just seem to lose site of it sometimes for the reasons stated and others.