Moose Lake's police department is on the brink of dissolving, part of growing trend in small towns

CATHY WURZER: Moose Lake is the latest Minnesota city to find itself on the brink of losing its police department. Two officers resigned last summer, two more following this month, leaving one officer on the job. The city is covering shifts with a roster of part-time officers from neighboring cities, but it's a temporary fix.

Later today, the Moose Lake city council will consider whether or not to dissolve its local police department entirely. Jim Mortenson, the Executive Director of the Minnesota Law Enforcement Labor Services joins us right now to talk about this policing problem facing small towns like Moose Lake. Jim, welcome to the program.

JIM MORTENSON: Thank you for the invitation.

CATHY WURZER: Say, what did you think when you heard about Moose Lake? Did you see this coming?

JIM MORTENSON: This is actually not uncommon in these smaller departments that are one, two, or three, or four officers. They're having a difficult time competing with the larger agencies around them when it comes to wages and benefits.

CATHY WURZER: You grew up on the Range, I understand in a small town. Did you have a police department in your town? And how important was it?

JIM MORTENSON: I did. I grew up in a small town called Marble. It had one officer and one chief. And several years ago, our own police department was dissolved. And so these smaller agencies are having a very difficult time keeping up in the market with these larger agencies.

CATHY WURZER: Are small police departments still important? Or are there better options now for small towns like Moose Lake?

JIM MORTENSON: No. I think they're absolutely important. And giving my own, where I grew up on the Iron Range, that town that I grew up in was a great community to grow up in as a child. And I think it's gotten worse since they haven't had a police department. So I do think it's important to have public safety in your communities at all times.

CATHY WURZER: If the Moose Lake city council decides to dissolve this department, what are the long-term effects for folks in that area if they lose their local police force?

JIM MORTENSON: Well, you could have, depending on what they plan to replace it with, you could have potential increases in crime, property values could go down. There's numerous things that could happen when you lose your identity of your community.

CATHY WURZER: So they're looking at Carlton County, Carlton County Sheriffs in that area-- and some of their small town police departments-- some other small towns have looked to the county sheriffs for help for covering shifts and that kind of thing. What do you think of that? Does that seem to work out OK?

JIM MORTENSON: It's got its plus and minuses to doing that. A lot of times, these smaller communities will close their doors on their police departments, and then, obviously, the county has to step in and take over public safety. But another thing that's happening out in the law enforcement world right now is sometimes departments will join together. If you've got two small towns that are close to one another, they'll form one department and then share the resources.

CATHY WURZER: Interesting. So I wonder with the county sheriff, maybe, if, say, Moose Lake contracts with Carlton County-- any other downsides to working with the sheriff's department at all?

JIM MORTENSON: Well, one of the big issues that comes with the sheriff's department taking over public safety in the community is, are you going to get the same number of hours? When you have officers that are working routine schedules, you have a certain number of coverage hours that happen in those communities. The other issue is your community members knowing who your members of your department are and forming those bonds and those relationships. It could be a DARE officer that's in the schools that builds those bonds with the kids, and who knows what will happen with programs like that?

CATHY WURZER: So you mentioned that some of these smaller departments are having a tough time competing with larger departments that can pay more, you know? And I'm wondering, gosh, how can a small town department compete? It seems like it's kind of an uphill climb if you're looking at money.

JIM MORTENSON: Well, part of the issue-- we got to go back and look at the cause and effect of this, of why is this happening? And once you look at that issue, it kind of makes sense. When you've got a profession now that has been kind of villainized and demonized, you don't have the kids coming out of high school trying to figure out their career path and going in and doing these jobs.

There's been a little over a 28% reduction in kids graduating from high school wanting to go and be a police officer. That's a problem. That's a third of your candidates that are no longer there. You have departments that are losing members that are not working their full career. They're just saying, I've had enough of this.

And I'm not going to work in this profession anymore. And I'm going to go be a plumber or I'm going to go and roof a house. They just don't want to be part of what's going on in the profession nowadays.

CATHY WURZER: Are you saying that the vilification occurs in small towns too?

JIM MORTENSON: It occurs everywhere. It's across our entire country right now. I worked in law enforcement for 32 years. When I went in and tried to get my first job, you had hundreds of candidates standing there wanting that job. When you walked in the door, you kind of felt defeated because you had so much competition.

Now, these departments, they're lucky if they get any candidates. And some of the larger departments are only getting in maybe the teens or maybe 20 or 30 candidates.

CATHY WURZER: So you're saying that the pipeline is not what it was. And money is also a bit of an issue, if I'm understanding what you said earlier in our conversation. So, gosh, what are small towns left to do, then?

JIM MORTENSON: Well, that's the million dollar question. We've lost about 35 agencies in the state of Minnesota in the last eight years. We have a little over 400 law enforcement agencies in the state right now. So you can see the trend that's happening. And we got to do something on a more global aspect of, how do we fix this?

CATHY WURZER: Is this something that the state has to step into? There was the public safety bill last session, and it did include money for training, and recruitment, and that kind of thing. Is that a help?

JIM MORTENSON: Well, it would have been if they wouldn't have changed the rules of that bill. And they watered it down to take it away from recruitment and retention and then opened it up to allowing, whether it's the city or county, to buy equipment with it. So you're getting fire trucks purchased and snow plows purchased. So the $300 million that was set aside for public safety got watered down and basically opened up to buy anything that was public safety-related.

CATHY WURZER: Say, before you go in while I'm talking about the Capitol, I know that you're following the SRO bill that's on a pretty fast track at the Capitol. When you look at the new version of the bill, what do you think about it? And do you think officers would start returning to schools?

JIM MORTENSON: Well, if they take away the two different uses of force-- and there's also a training component in there, which we don't know exactly what that training is going to be because it hasn't been formulated yet. That's my concern is the training side of it. But if they get rid of the doing use of force two different ways, that's the big hurdle in this bill.

And I think that's the goal of getting it back to where it was. But at the end of the day, until the final version of it is to its fruition, we really don't know where it's going to land.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Jim, I know you're busy. Thanks for the time today.

JIM MORTENSON: You bet. Thank you for the opportunity.

CATHY WURZER: Jim Mortensen is the Executive Director of the Minnesota Law Enforcement Labor Services.