SALISBURY TWP., Pa. – It’s been a difficult year for police across Pennsylvania with many dispatch calls turning deadly.<\/p>\n
It comes as law enforcement faces a recruitment and retention crisis.<\/p>\n
“There are not enough people that want to be police officers,” says PA Attorney General Dave Sunday.<\/p>\n
Sunday says statewide, the situation is a crisis.<\/p>\n
So much so that in May, the state Senate adopted a resolution creating a law enforcement recruitment and retention task force.<\/p>\n
‘”What we are trying to do is identify ways of course where we can find more people to become police officers,” says Sunday.<\/p>\n
The task force will work to identify the causes of staffing challenges and find solutions. It will make its recommendations to lawmakers by late spring.<\/p>\n
In Salisbury Twp., Lehigh County, the police department is full.<\/p>\n
In other municipalities across our area, however, applications have dipped.<\/p>\n
“When I first started 25 years ago, there were 300 applicants testing for one position. During the covid era and right after covid we were in the teens,” says Chief Donald Sabo.<\/p>\n
Sabo says this year, that number has gone up slightly and he hopes that trend can continue.<\/p>\n
“I’m thinking that we’re gonna see a little bit of a shift with more people wanting to get into this noble profession become police officers and make a career and at the end of the day do a great job and help people in their darkest day or darkest hour of need,” Sabo says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALISBURY TWP., Pa. – It’s been a difficult year for police across Pennsylvania with many dispatch calls turning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,1856,28,1385,27440,27441,27442,12616],"class_list":{"0":"post-46569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-law-enforcement","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-police-officers","14":"tag-recruitment-crisis","15":"tag-retention-crisis","16":"tag-staffing-challenges","17":"tag-task-force"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}