We saw this east of our office in north Springdale.
Posted by NWADG on Wednesday, March 25, 2015
The Town of Signal Mountain has a problem.
Although the police department for the Tennessee town of about 8,000 is authorized to have 16 officers, over the past couple of years it’s had a staffing shortage, town manager Boyd Veal said.
“We’re really having a consistent and ongoing issue with turnover at the patrol level, where most of the time, we’re not at full staff,” said Veal, who previously served as police chief. “It varies whether we’ll be one, two, three officers short at times, but it’s almost like we’re in a constant hiring process to maintain a full complement of officers.”
The town government has begun taking steps to address the turnover issue, Mayor Bill Lusk said. In addition to studying police pay in surrounding municipalities, the town hopes to determine in real dollars the cost to recruit, train and then lose an officer, he said.