Recruitment and retention in any profession has seen challenges recently and law enforcement is no different. McDonough County Sheriff Nick Petitgout informs one area of concern is the pension reform done back in 2011:
“They split the pension and went from Tier 1 to Tier 2. People have to work longer and for less money and I just don’t see that as a benefit for police officers and firemen and teachers. I think it has been detrimental, but we hear all these things out of Springfield, out of Chicago that we have a recruiting and retention crisis, we have a teacher crisis, we have a police crisis, we have a fire crisis with recruitment and retention of these individuals. We did this back in 2011, we did it to ourselves. Nights, weekends, holidays, all for low pay and then you couple that with my pension is better than the ones coming after me. They are looking at that and deciding to go to something else. That is really where we are at, that is why we struggle.”
