More than two-thirds of all police officers in the U.S. work in cities with less than 10,000 people, but when law enforcement agencies can’t compete financially, there is little they can do to stem the exodus of good cops to other jurisdictions.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average entry-level police officer salary in the U.S. is $63,690, although California is significantly lower – despite having one of the highest costs of living nationwide.
In Colusa, starting wages around $49,000 means the department – more likely than not – will just be a starting point for new cops to learn the ins and outs of police work before they move on to better paying positions, officials said.
“We get a lot of officers in from the academy, which is where you have to start,” said Sgt. David Jackson, in a presentation before the City Council on Sept. 6. “They will stay for a couple of years and then they will leave. It’s mostly due to salaries and benefits. Other opportunities, yes, but out of all the people I know that have left…they are still just patrol officers or maybe promoted to corporal.”
The departure of Colusa cops to the neighboring agencies for more money and better benefits has been an issue for the struggling department for years, despite repeated attempts by the department, one of the busiest in Colusa County, to halt the exodus.
For Jackson, and other officers who would like to continue working in Colusa because of its positive atmosphere, the underpayment for services rendered, along with long hours brought on by understaffing, has chiseled at their morale, making it harder for them not to gravitate toward other agencies.
Compared to the Williams Police Department and Colusa County Sheriff’s Office, Colusa police officers – who last year answered about 5,000 calls for service, assisted other agencies about 400 times, wrote 800 citations, took 900 reports, arrested 300 people, and made 2,300 traffic stops – are paid far less.
“Willams is almost $800 a month more, top step, and the sheriff’s office is almost $1,000 more,” Jackson said.
According to Colusa’s General Plan, Colusa should have two officers for every 1,000 people for a total of 13, although the city has barely managed to meet half that requirement in years.
“We are at eight,” Jackson said. “We are that far down and we can’t keep up.”
With salaries that are 26 percent below other agencies for police officers – and 32 percent below average for police sergeants – Colusa’s men and women in blue said something will have to change for the city to keep a working police department, especially now that agencies everywhere are offering big incentives and signing bonuses to overcome a national police officer shortage.
“We have a hard time getting people because all these other agencies not only offer more salary but overall better benefits,” Jackson said. “Things like full family medical and take home cars matter to these people that are driving to and from work everyday.”
According to a June 2021 national survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, police departments around the country on average were filling less than 93 percent of available budgeted positions, with a 45 percent increase in retirements and an 18 percent jump in resignations over the previous year – the ripple effect from the movement to defund or abolish police departments in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
The recruitment and retention crisis is also attributable to other social, behavioral, political, and economic forces that eventually result in police burnout and cause longer wait times for service and fewer crimes being solved – all of which threaten the quality of life in the community.
“I just don’t think people realize that when they call the Sheriff’s Department, which is our dispatch center, and they give us the call, that they are potentially going to have to wait for however long it takes for one officer to show up – or no officer is going to show up because one of us is stuck at the hospital doing a medical clear or something with mental health,” Jackson said. “We’ve seen mental health cases take 14 hours. You get one of those at the beginning of the shift and you’re done for the rest of the shift.”
While Jackson said calls given high priority would get answered, reports of burglary, theft, nuisances, abandoned vehicles and other minor crimes would be pending in the queue for officers on the next shift – and even that is no guarantee the call will be answered.
“We can’t keep up,” Jackson said. “We don’t have the bodies.”
In Colusa, the problem is financial, with the City Council ultimately responsible for changing the culture.
“I don’t think anyone would disagree that we need to address the situation,” said Councilman Greg Ponciano. “There are a couple of components that we need to identify. We need to address recruitment issues, and, on a separate level, retention. By retention, I mean base pay. By recruitment, I mean how we are going to attract officers.”
Jackson said with fewer people wanting to be cops, high paying agencies with huge signing bonuses are at the top of the list for securing recruits directly from the academy, along with agencies that sponsor cadets by paying their way through the academy.
“You used to be able to go to an academy and out of an academy of 45 cadetes, only 10 of them would already have jobs with law enforcement agencies; the other ones are fighting for jobs. That is no longer the case.”
While the Colusa police shortage is a good argument for passing the 1 percent sales tax measure on the November ballot to boost general fund coffers, council members suggested Colusa might also want to boost recruitment efforts through bonuses from the general fund, cannabis fund, or American Rescue Plan Act fund.
At the end of the day, however, Colusa Police Chief Josh Fitch said he is less interested in luring police officers who may not stay with large one-time signing bonuses but would rather the City Council find a way to offer police officers longevity in a department that has a positive work environment – but with the salaries and benefits befitting their training, duties, risks, and responsibilities.
“What it all comes down to is that we can’t even pull locally from people because we are not competitive,” Fitch said. “We never have been.”
Fitch said not only does the city need a minimum number of officers for the safety of the community and the safety of the officers, but that it needs to add an investigator and possibly a K9 officer to fight and solve crimes.
While the City Council and Police Department continue to seek an answer to the “chicken or the egg” question, officials said the solutions will come down to what the community – and those who must make the decisions – want in their police department.
“We have our work cut out for us as a council,” said Mayor Tom Reishe. “But we do need to promote the November election, Measure B, because that is where their money will come from.”
With or without an increase in tax revenue, City officials agreed they must address the police officer shortage and the culture of losing good cops to neighboring agencies soon or risk the lives of people in the community.
It’s a decision they may have to make as the city begins another round of negotiations with police officers in October – long before the election.
“We have to make the police department a priority,” said Councilman Daniel Vaca. ■