Cities can't find enough cops. Here's what to do about it.

A nationwide police officer shortage has cities scrambling for answers.

The New Orleans Police Department is learning to do more with less. (Photo by Douglas Sacha/Getty Images)

Two years ago, the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) was reaching a breaking point. It had lost nearly one-fifth of its officers since before the pandemic, and response times ballooned: For nonemergencies, waits more than tripled to three hours.

If you dialed 911 because your house had been burglarized in the morning, it could be late in the afternoon before an officer stopped by. Responses to domestic abuse, sex offenses, and other critical calls also bogged down.

Today, the NOPD’s stats look far better. Nonemergency responses have been knocked down to 66 minutes, for instance. What’s more, it managed to cut those times without being able to increase the size of its force.

What did the department do? Simply put, it got much smarter about when to deploy officers to a scene and when it could farm out jobs to civilians. It outsourced low-stakes jobs that eat up an inordinate number of police hours, such as dealing with routine fender benders, and the department became more efficient.

To the uninitiated, that might sound suspiciously like the ideas defund-the-police activists batted around during the hothouse days of 2020, but the goals of officials in places like New Orleans are vastly different from those protesters’. Nobody’s trying to cut the law enforcement budget, and — most importantly — the city is still doing its best to increase the number of cops on the street.

Instead, what the city’s strategy offers is a realistic example of how short-staffed departments across the country can cope with a national shortage of trained officers that has become a danger to public safety and our ability to solve crime.

Cities are struggling to hire cops

Many American cities are facing what you might call a cop crunch. Staffing at large urban police departments fell considerably in the wake of COVID-19, and those lost officers are generally not returning. Thirty-six of the country’s 50 largest forces shrank between 2019 and 2024, with a 11% average drop among those that got smaller. Four cities — Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Cleveland — have lost at least 25% of their officers.