Police departments around the U.S. are seeing officers leave the force; How’s Duluth PD doing?

Around the United States, there are police departments that have seen the number of police officers decrease. There are several reasons why those officers leave the force.

The City of Duluth Chief of Police, Mike Ceyonwa, shared his thoughts on that decrease is happening. “We had the Ferguson the Michael Brown shooting in Missouri; that’s when we started to see an exodus after that. In 2015 started to cause a recruitment crisis, with people being interested in the field. Then after the murder of George Floyd, we started to see a huge exodus from the field.”

Other reasons to account for the drop in numbers would be community support and involvement, going to other departments, retiring, etc. Another factor that can come into play when looking to recruit and hire is the pay scale.

“Pay is always a piece of this. We pay really well for this region of Minnesota, but we aren’t meeting the pay scale that people are seeing in the Twin Cities metro area. That’s been a difficult piece for us. It’s difficult to get people in at the same time. This is something that always resonates with younger people looking to get into the profession. But we have a really phenomenal healthcare program,” said Chief Ceyonwa.

Between 20-20 through 2022, the Minneapolis Police Department saw more than 250 officers leave their jobs. In Duluth, there has been some turnover, but not at a high level.

DPD has a recruitment page on their social media account within their police department page that has tons of information about the department recruiting process and more.

“We want people to come in here, see themselves as police officers who want to work with us and for their community. We want people to see themselves in our department in that role. We want to build a department that looks as diverse as the communities that it represents,” Chief Ceyonwa expressed.