Sep. 10—GRAND MEADOW, Minn. — They're looking to hire police officers at the two-person police department in Grand Meadow.
The city's one full-time patrol officer is currently undergoing a background check for a job with another law enforcement agency, said Grand Meadow City Administrator Scott Kerrins. The city's other full-time officer — Police Chief Jim Richardson — will likely retire in the next few years.
How long that department retains its staff — any staff — is anyone's guess.
Is Kerrins worried the city may one day find itself with zero employees in the police department?
"Absolutely. That is one of our greatest concerns. In Grand Meadow, typically young officers we hire are fresh out their POST certification," he said.
Finding those officers today has become increasingly more difficult.
Currently, there are 204 openings on the state's job board for licensed peace officers, meaning individuals who have or can pass the Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training — POST — standards test. Of those openings listed on the Minnesota POST job board, 14 are for cities and counties in Southeast Minnesota. That doesn't include some jobs for state agencies — the Minnesota State Patrol or the Department of Natural Resources — that are looking to fill positions in the region.
Those 204 job openings do not include, for example, the four deputy positions that the Goodhue County Sheriff's Office had open as Aug. 16. It also doesn't factor in that a job listing for a part-time deputy in the Fillmore County Sheriff's Office actually represents a need for six part-time deputy positions.
"We don't know with any certainty if we will have openings in the next year," said Fillmore County Sheriff John DeGeorge, "but approximately five of our full-time deputies are currently eligible for retirement."
That's five out of a staff, if all jobs are filled, of 21 full-time and seven part-time deputies.
Finding replacements for any open positions is just getting harder.
In 2018, there were 16 graduates combined from the criminal justice and law enforcement programs at Rochester Community and Technical College. Those numbers swelled to 38 and 37 in 2019 and 2020, respectively. By 2023, those numbers had fallen to 12. Enrollment in the two programs at RCTC followed a similar path, with 98 students in 2019 and 109 in 2020. But by 2023, the number of enrollees had fallen to 58 students.
"Enrollment in the state of Minnesota (in law enforcement programs) is down 50%," said Goodhue County Sheriff Marty Kelly. "But our retirement rate hasn't slowed down."
Kelly said of the four open positions he's looking to fill in his department, he received five qualified applicants and he expects to get one, two at most, new deputies from this round of hiring.
"Academically, we have seen a substantial decrease in the number of students interested in the peace officer career path," said Randy Mohawk, academic program leader for the peace officer program at RCTC. "But there has been a gradual increase in the number of students interested in the criminal justice career path."
Criminal justice degrees lead more to jobs in probation and correction, he said.
With retirements continuing and fewer young people entering the job pool for law enforcement, departments are picking from a smaller pool.
Houston County Sheriff Brian Swedberg said that while his department just hired a new deputy to fill out its roster, that new hire came from a pool of two applicants.
"The person we did hire has minimal experience," Swedberg said. "In the past, we used to receive 15 to 20 applications, and a majority of them had a lot of experience."
Mohawk said it will be a while before interest in the peace officer program rebounds. He said factors such as negative media coverage, social issues in individual communities and a lack of political support have driven down interest in careers in law enforcement.
"Who wants to start a career where every decision you make will be reviewed and if it doesn't fit with someone else's perspective you could end up losing your job or going to jail or prison," Mohawk said.
Much of this decline can be traced back to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the negative reaction to all police in the aftermath.
"I think the George Floyd case, I think it's had a major impact on people wanting to go into that career," said Kerrins. "I don't know if Minnesota will ever see that turn around. A lot of law enforcement, they feel like they're not being supported."
Kerrins said that lack of support continues. He pointed to a recent legal opinion from Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison concerning what kinds of physical holds can be used in schools on students. The AG's opinion was met with concern from statewide law enforcement agencies.
"One of the problems is the talk about removing qualified immunity," said Zumbrota Police Chief Patrick Callahan. "No one does this job to harm the public. We do it to serve the public. But sometimes people are harmed when you're serving the public."
Fully staffed for a quite a while, Callahan said many small town police departments face pressures from retirements and officers finding greener pastures with other agencies. Many small town police departments find it hard to fill jobs because they compete with police departments in the Twin Cities that can offer more money and more chances for advancement.
"The Metro is taking all the people from Greater Minnesota. That's the domino effect," Callahan said. "I think we're going to see a number of small departments go defunct."
While four of the 14 listings in Southeast Minnesota on the POST job board are for part-time officers, filling those positions is even more difficult than filling the full-time jobs.
"Went away from part-timers a few years ago," Callahan said. "If people are going into law enforcement, they want a full-time job. There are plenty of openings."
Kerrins said the part-time officers who get hired in Grand Meadow have typically been new law enforcement officers who are working part time in more than one town or older licensed peace officers who work another job. The city only needs about three shifts a month covered by part-time officers, who generally have a separate full-time job anyway.
Today, finding those new officers who will take a part-time job is a lot harder than it was even five years ago.
"They are very few and far between," Kerrins said. "Those are more an anomaly at this point."
Kerrins said replacing the officer who is leaving will be hard for two reasons. First, recruitment in law enforcement is just more difficult in the post-2020 world. Second, while the city's starting pay for a patrol officer — $27.81 an hour — is middle of the road, especially in a supportive rural town, the city of Grand Meadow doesn't offer health care benefits to its employees.
That, he said, could be a sticking point moving forward not just in finding new police officers for the city.
And it's not just the small towns that are having problems. Austin Police Chief David McKichan said his department is currently looking to fill five spots on its roster of 36 licensed peace officers. And while two new officers were sworn in on Sept. 5, those officers will require about 14 to 16 weeks of training before they are out on the streets.
McKichan said he has another two officers who are going through the hiring process now, meaning they might be sworn in sometime in October.
"It will still leave us one short of 36," McKichan said, adding, "I do anticipate the potential for additional openings next year."
When the
city of Goodhue accepted the resignations of its entire police force
on Aug. 14, 2023, the city of 1,250 was left without a police department. The next step for Goodhue was to
sign a deal with the Goodhue County Sheriff's Office
for county deputies to provide coverage for the city at a price of $55.83 per hour. A sheriff's deputy is tasked to the city under the arrangement.
But Sheriff Kelly has his own staffing issues, so signing a deal to task deputies to one city means his staff will face additional stresses in doing its job.
"Our staff is stressed already," the sheriff said. "We've had a few people leave this year. We're forcing people to work overtime. They hate it. I hate it. But we have to have the coverage."
Kelly said one saving grace of the deal with the city of Goodhue is that it came during county budget talks, which means he might make an argument to hire more deputies, if he can find them.
If Grand Meadow were to lose its police department, Kerrins said, the city would essentially have two options.
The first option would be to simply use the Mower County Sheriff's Office to respond to calls as needed but not pay for dedicated hours of patrol coverage in the city. County sheriffs are required to provide service to the cities within their counties on an as-needed basis. Kerrins said that not a day goes by that Mower County deputies don't drive through the city of about 1,100 people southwest of Stewartville, but that's not the same as having officers who are dedicated to patrol your city.
Option two would be to sign a deal with Mower County similar to the one the city of Goodhue signed with Goodhue County, in which the city pays the county for deputies to patrol the town a certain number of hours each week.
In Zumbrota, Callahan said the closing of the Goodhue Police Department about 10 miles up the road probably won't impact his department, but as the number of police officers and sheriff's deputies gets spread thinner and thinner in any area, it's going to bring some repercussions.
"As far as mutual aid goes, we have a pretty good relationship with the sheriff's office," Callahan said. "We respond to calls in Wanamingo, Pine Island (both communities that have contracts with the Goodhue County Sheriff's Office) and even Mazeppa (in Wabasha County). Sometimes, it's just because we're the closest car."
Callahan said that recruitment and pay — the issues that doomed the Goodhue Police Department — are constant topics among fellow leaders in law enforcement.
"I do keep a pulse on the surrounding agencies," he said. "Yeah, there's concerns."
Thank goodness, said Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson, his law enforcement agency is fully staffed.
It's not an accident.
"We keep a list of potential new hires," Torgerson said. "It's a small list. It's a lot smaller than it's ever been before."
There are 23 names on the list, the sheriff said, though the first 14 have already found jobs with other law enforcement agencies. That leaves nine names.
The county conducts testing of potential applicants every three months to get names for the list. But it's unlikely all of those individuals, Torgerson said, will be a good fit for OCSO in the end.
Torgerson said the list came about because in the 1990s, the county hired a large number of deputies. Those individuals are approaching — or have reached — retirement age, which generally occurs between the ages of 51 and 55. Knowing the department would hit a bubble of retirements, the list was developed.
But in today's law enforcement job market, it's hard to keep people on that list for what should be a plum job in the industry in this part of the state.
With 81 licensed peace officers, the Olmsted County Sheriff's Office is the second largest law enforcement agency in Southeast Minnesota, right after the Rochester Police Department, which has 150 officers when at full strength.
RPD Crime Prevention & Communications Coordinator Amanda Grayson said the agency is currently down two officers.
"Law enforcement agencies across the country are struggling to fill vacancies," Grayson said. "Fewer people are entering the profession, so the candidate pool is shrinking. RPD has seen a significant decrease in police officer applicants the last several years."
Torgerson described a similar experience. The last time the county sought applicants for deputy positions, it received six applications. Only four of those applicants actually made it to the interview process. Those four were put on the list, but, the sheriff said, he knows at least two already have found other jobs in law enforcement.
Pay at some agencies is part of the reason it can be difficult to hire, though Olmsted County's rates are competitive with other agencies. But the big reason, he said, is society's changing attitude toward law enforcement officers. And while those attitudes have been changing since before cameras caught Los Angeles police beating Rodney King on March 3, 1991, they've gotten worse in recent years. Torgerson said there are milepost moments: the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; the shooting of Philando Castile in the Twin Cities suburb of St. Anthony; the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.
The last one, he said, has created a monumental shift in attitudes toward police.
"If we could replay that clock to May 24, 2020, even though we were in the throes of COVID, I would," Torgerson said.
In the aftermath, it's been harder to find applicants.
Torgerson said that after the death of George Floyd, his department was training a pair of new hires. After two weeks, one said he could no longer do the job for fear of the public backlash.
"Has it created a barrier to hiring?" he said. "Absolutely."
And yet, law enforcement agencies still have a job to do. His own department covers the county and has contracts with four cities: Stewartville, Eyota, Byron and Oronoco. Each of those contracts means more deputies for his department.
Fortunately, he said, there are no small-town police departments in Olmsted County that might falter. Other than RPD and the Minnesota State Patrol, the sheriff's office is the only game in the county.
Well, except for Chatfield. The city, which is half in Fillmore County and half in Olmsted County, does have its own police department, and the city is currently hiring.
Torgerson said he's talked with his counterpart in Fillmore County about any "what ifs" that might occur. But so far, so good.
In the meantime, for anyone who wants to change the culture of law enforcement, Torgerson said they should take the classes, get the certification and change policing from within.
"I say, if you want to change policing, join us," Torgerson said. "So far with anyone we've hired or interviewed, I haven't seen anyone do this."
