The small town of Goodhue, Minn., is set to lose its entire police force next Wednesday after ten officers announced their intention to resign over lack of funding.
The entire force tendered their resignations during a city council meeting on Friday following news that police chief Josh Smith had submitted his resignation the previous day.
“This is heartbreaking to us,” the town’s mayor, Ellen Anderson Buck, said following an emergency council meeting held on Monday to address the matter. Smith and one fellow officer will remain on active duty until this coming Wednesday. “Since the resignations have been handed in by our police department, it has been recommended by our city attorney that, at this point, we need to pursue our other options,” the mayor added.
“At this point, there’s no reason to really talk about pay increases, since we no longer have a police force.”
Chris Schmit, a fellow council member, insisted Goodhue’s political leaders act quickly to plug any enforcement gaps to ensure the crisis is averted.
“I can probably speak for everyone when I say that they provided excellent safety and security to our community. And the small town policing that they did, we want that back,” Schmit told Fox News on Tuesday.
In July, the police chief of the 1,300-person town told the city council that if better pay was not on the table, staffing the department would remain an ongoing problem. “This has been three weeks now, we have zero applicants, and I have zero prospects,” Smith told the assembly at the time. “I’ve called every PD [police department] around for the youngest guys out there, getting into the game. There’s nobody getting into the game.”
“If you want to keep the PD and this is something we want to continue going with, something needs to change dramatically and drastically, and it’s got to happen now,” Smith added.
“Trying to hire at $22 an hour, you’re never going to see another person again walk through those doors. That’s it. Unless you guys do a dramatic change.” The police chief reportedly threw out the idea of a pay bump to $30 hourly rate to help solve the issue.
“There’s zero incentive to come out here to a small town, low pay, being on call, affecting your free time and everything else.”