National News Roundup – November 13, 2024

Law Enforcement Recruitment Remains a Challenge

Applications cannot keep pace with vacancies, impacting response.

The COVID-19 pandemic took its toll on the work force in many industries, and police departments were no exception. In that same era, numerous protests against the police added to the difficulty in recruiting new officers to fill the ranks.

The Miami-Dade Police Department in Florida is an example. The department has had 809 applicants on their police officer recruitment list this year. A decade ago, they would have had that many applicants on the first day.

Although small and medium-sized departments are rebounding, big cities continue to struggle. Seattle, Washington, has only been able to hire half as many people as the number of officers who have retired this year. In Los Angeles, a city that has a historically understaffed police department, Chief Dominic Choi says he has just under 9,000 officers, leaving him 25 percent short of the 12,000 needed to be “well-staffed.”

“I think it has made it more difficult to respond to all types of calls,” Choi said, adding that for nonemergency calls the average response time used to be 20 minutes, but is now “40 minutes, up to an hour.”

According to some experts, young people are less likely to pursue police jobs due to financial demands, perceptions of law enforcement, and expectations for remote work, which is not easily offered to public safety employees. Chuck Wexler, executive director of the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum says, “The risk associated with being a police officer outweighs the benefits.”

Some issues are fixable. One thing that could help would be shortening the time frame between applying and hiring. It can take from six months to a year to get hired as an officer. Sherry Skaggs, a criminologist at the University of Central Arkansas, says that improving community relations is key. Departments need to make connections with potential recruits and offer them support from day one. “We need to make that initial stage of the hiring process more personal,” Skaggs says.

“There’s something to be said, in today’s day and age, for doing more work on going to your potential applicants, rather than expecting them to come to you.”

(Source: Governing)

Some Cities Try Treating Surfaces to Battle Heat

Application of reflective coatings on asphalt yields mixed results.

Phoenix, Arizona, is brutally hot in the summer. This year the desert city had a daytime high of over 110 for 70 days, and 113 days in a row in which the temperature rose above 100. Officials and residents are desperate for ways to cool things off.

Phoenix tried an experiment with “cool pavement,” which involved covering black asphalt with a coating that reflects sunlight upward rather than absorbing heat from its rays. The results were mixed.

A study of the project by Arizona State University found that, while asphalt surfaces treated with cooling technology had significantly lower surface temperatures compared with conventional pavement, the treated pavement increased the air temperature directly above it, which increased the heat stress a person standing on the surface would experience at midday.

The study found reflective surface treatment is not effective in high-rise downtown areas and should not be used in areas with high pedestrian traffic like playgrounds, plazas or parks.

Cool pavement technology is most effective on large parking lots that lack shade or in car-congested cities in hot climates, communities with sparse cloud cover and wide residential streets. For a city, the benefits of cool-pavement technology are reductions in street surface temperatures. This means the pavement is under less thermal strain, which could reduce long-term maintenance needs and costs.

The Phoenix study notes that urban heat exposure mitigation should focus on shading from trees and engineered shade in areas where a reduction in surface air temperature is the goal.

(Source: SmartCitiesDive)

2024 Election Unfolded Without Violent Activities

Despite heightened alert and some threats, no major incidents.

On Election Day 2024, there were certainly threats of violence as anticipated. Fortunately, no major incidents have been reported.

Bomb threats were reported across five key battleground states on November 5, 2024, both to polling places and government offices where votes are counted. None were credible, and many were deemed to be foreign attempts, most of them originating in Russia, to disrupt the U.S. election. The FBI confirmed that Michigan was among the states hit with false bomb threats originating from Russia.

The State of Georgia was particularly hard hit with false bombs threats. Fulton County in and around Atlanta received threats to 32 of its 177 polling locations.

In Washington State, the National Guard was put on stand-by status prior to the election by Governor Jay Inslee, but no incidents were reported.

Across the nation, elections offices were on heightened alert for trouble. Many had installed bullet-proof glass and hardened partitions. Police agencies posted highly visible officers to deter potential violence. In some cases, police sniper teams were positioned to defend election-related locations.

While some sporadic issues popped up, including long lines and isolated problems with voting machines, states reported a mostly straightforward and Election Day.

(Sources: CNN, U.S. News and World Report)

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