The year 2020 brought us one of the most chaotic ones arguably of our lifetimes. It began with pandemic lockdowns and was bookended by a controversial Presidential election that November. The middle of that year though brought us maybe the most absurd bit of all. The protests in the name of 'justice.' You remember them. Where people lit convenience stores on fire, and looted Target stores all because of the death of George Floyd.

But those events gave us more than just ridiculous temper tantrums. It brought about the lunacy of the 'defund the police' movement, one that has since all but gone away, as cities who did defund their departments are punished with its effects. That movement though sparked other complete nonsense, like people calling in fake emergencies to ambush officers trying to do their jobs. In turn, that caused new police hires to start declining even more than they had been.

Things though are turning back around, at least on the national scale. Police officer hires saw an increase in 2023, after many years of decline, and heavy drops in the wake of 2020.

Former Houston Police Captain Greg Fremin says though this came about at the expense of some standards.

"They went into overdrive with aggressive recruiting and marketing to fill these voids...and some of these departments had to lower their standards...in order to get a full pool of applicants," he says.

While it may sound like that is a disaster, this is not a Boeing 'hire underqualified people because of DEI' situation.

"When we start lowering standards, they took out some educational mandates...and it is a concern we should have, but I still think we are vetting them the best...and are getting a superior product," he says.

Fremin does say that even with the most stringent requirements, there have been unqualified people still slip into the system.

In Houston, we were fortunate enough to not be enveloped by all the 'defund the police' nonsense. But while we have not seen some massive shrink in size, there has not been true growth either. Even as they continuously pump our recruits.

"We are putting out about five classes a year...but we still have the same number of officers in Houston as we did about 15 to 20 years ago," he says.

Yup, the sprawling metropolis of Houston has the same number of officers as it did in the early 2000s before exploding in size. That presents a problem in itself, as far as response to calls and understaffing.

But, how does the city manage to not have the police staff grow, when they are churning out hundreds of recruits each year?

"If we have 70 cadets in a class, with five classes a year, that is 350 recruits...but our retirements average sometimes between two and three hundred...we are just breaking even each year," he says.

The other problem is a discontent among the force, from being underpaid, overworked, and overextended.

Fremin adds that HPD should have about 3,000 more officers than it currently does, for how big the city has become.

Jimmy Barrett