Urban police departments are suffering a “personnel crisis” as officers leave for higher paying jobs in suburban departments or private businesses and grow weary of public and news media criticism regarding police brutality and racial profiling. Statistics show that the number of applicants for the police examination, the first step to becoming a police officer, has dropped while many have noticed that officers are declining promotion to higher ranks to avoid working nights and weekends and to keep overtime pay. As a partial solution, some police departments are switching to rotation work schedules, but skeptics say it undermines the goals of the job.
See Fox Butterfield, The New York Times, July 29, 2001