Cutbacks: No More Police

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You are sitting in your living room watching TV, you then hear gun shots and then screams of terror outside your home. You peek through the curtains to see a person laying on the sidewalk. You pick up the phone and dial 911. You are calling the police seeking help, but you are told that there are no police officers available because your city is suffering from a financial crisis and they laid off more than half of the police force. You think to yourself that this cannot be possible, you must dreaming, you reiterate that a person has been shot outside of your home and is in need of help. The dispatcher tells you there is nothing she can do at the moment because all the officers are on other calls and this will have to wait. This scenario may be extreme, however; right now across the United States, the financial crisis has effected law enforcement. Budget reductions are causing vacancies in police departments to go unfilled while at the same time crime rates in several states are rising.
The recession is not only effecting the United States financially, it is also effecting the safety of every person living in this country. Normally when we hear the word recession, you think of foreclosure, high gas prices, businesses going belly-up, drop in consumer spending and let's not forget major job losses, such as in factories, but most of us do not think about job loss in the criminal justice sector. It is happening and it is not a good thing either. The crime rates are rising, the community safety is decreasing and the risk of injury or death for officers is increasing.
In 2011, the city Camden, in New Jersey laid off just about half of its police force, leaving the crime laden city to the mercy of criminals. In North Carolina, pol...

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