This is somewhat related to another post but rage and bad driving is not what I'm wondering about. In the past, years past now, I would be on the lookout for cops if I was speeding, because they policed the streets. In the past, it was not uncommon to pass others who had been pulled over for whatever reason. Now, I rarely see cops policing streets. I rarely see anyone pulled over and we have more cars on the road than ever before. What I do see is cars with no license plates, expired registration, busted tail lights, speeding, running red lights, not yielding, slow drivers in the left lane, passing in the right lane, reckless driving, list goes on and on. It's a free for all out there now, in every city I travel through in DFW. I can't speak for the other metropolitan areas because I'm not there frequently enough to give a worthy opinion. I know we have cops on this forum, likely city employees, and others in the know. So I ask again, where's the cops?

I don’t have the answer, but when I do see somebody pulled over on the Interstate my wife and I always wonder what he was doing to get pulled over. Must have been something special. Everybody is doing 80 or 85. I drive about 75 to 77 usually and feel like I’m dragging an anchor, the way I get passed.

Quite honestly, speeding is so rampant these days, what’s an understaffed police organization going to do to stop it? Of course, the smaller towns need revenue, so they’ll be actively ‘hunting’ in this target rich environment.

They are not out and about in Tyler.

Red lights mean nothing at all.

It’s the same way here. The Traffic Enforcement squad is a total of 2 officers, for a town with population of 60k, and IH35 passing through city limits. City leaders are directly responsible for the budget.

It’s the Ferguson effect. The officers do very little preventive patrol now because they can get fired or go to prison for lawfully stopping the “wrong people“.

Troopers are all rotating in and out of border.

The Juvenile delinquents have made it to Frisco. Street racing and idiots doing donuts in main intersections. Hopefully they will "drift" into a telephone pole.

Yep, a big part. Willingness to engage, have a slip up videod and the possibility of a career destroyed have become an issue.

Go look at who they are hiring. Your best bet is to defend yourself.

The entire police mindset has changed in my opinion. I could have continued in law enforcement for several more years, but I'm not willing to risk spending my golden years in prison for defending myself or someone else. This current generation of police are not the same as those from the 1970s.

State Troopers will be doing another rotation in Austin soon. Wouldn’t mind having them around here for a while.

...church parking lot sucking up free WiFi, surfing porn? IDK...

my son is an LEO and a good one. Have any of you noticed what all these city councils and commissioners are doing now days? They are cutting their police forces and the District Attorneys are looking for any way to prosecute LEO's - no wonder this is going on

They've been out all over the place the last few weeks. EVERYWHERE. I've been from Joshua to Divide, Co and then to Golden, Co and back. They are EVERYWHERE! I haven't seen anything like this since pre-Covid. So, yeah. Stay off the gas, guys and gals...

In fact Friday, I saw a cop at the on ramp from 1187 to I-35W in Fort Worth for the first time since 2019...

And Arlington cops have never paused pulling people over. They are out and about lighting them up and writing them up!

Just made a trip to Denver and back.

LOTS of LEOs monitoring drivers all along the way there and back.

Great. Write some tickets.

DPD is just trying to stay on top of the calls holding, we don’t have time for traffic stops. My division is relatively slow during the week, but also during that time we are lucky to have 12 officers at work, so 20-30 calls constantly on the board, many 12+ hours old is common occurrence. Now take the NE division and they have family violence calls that will hold for a day or two.

So yeah, there’s not much room for or time for traffic stops. And our DA wants to put us all in prison.

Add to the fact we can’t meet attrition and could really use 500-1000 more officers, there’s just no time or man power.

What is the pay scale for a 1-3 year Officer?

Ouch. So true at least 1/2 the time.

We just got from Colorado and I said the same thing.

I did not see a single Tx black and white, county or City cop coming or going.

It is weird.

I wish they would have told me!!!

Pretty good $67-71k base pay + incentives

https://dallaspolice.net/joindpd/Pages/SalaryBenefits.aspx

Rarely see Arlington PD on I20 except when they're running radar, which isn't that often either. Bunch of crazies all time of the day on that hwy.

Calls are up with less people, so proactive traffic stops take a back burner. In DFW pay has gotten better but there still aren’t the number of applicants from the past. I know we are hovering around 10 plus short and the agency next to us is probably closer to 30 short. Don’t forgot if someone started tomorrow, they aren’t a body on the street for about 45 weeks

Keep in mind.

If that starting pay is 70k, take out 10k a year you have to pay into a pension
(Dallas 13.5) percent. If the officer has a wife and kid to cover on insurance, that’s another 10k a year deduction.