Three towns in New Hampshire will receive a collective $500,000 to hire four new police officers, despite a decrease in violent crime in the state.
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen announced the additional funding this week, which will allow Laconia and Lincoln to each hire an officer and Dover to hire two officers.
The federal funds were granted by the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Service Hiring Program, which supports state and local law enforcement agencies to hire law enforcement and increase community policing efforts. Shaheen, a Democrat, is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, which funds the Department of Justice.
“Funding this program is always a top priority for me because of the return we see on investments in New Hampshire law enforcement and community policing efforts across the nation,” Shaheen said.
Despite falling crime rates across the state, the total number of police officers in New Hampshire has continued to expand over the past two decades at nearly twice as fast at population growth, accord to a Monitor analysis of statewide police data as part of its Counting Cops series, which published this past summer.
Over the last 20 years, the number of full-time certified police officers in the state increased by 20%, from 2,595 officers in 2000 to 3,117 in 2020, according to the New Hampshire Police Standards and Training Council. New Hampshire’s population increased by 11% during that same period while violent crime in the state fell by 16% and property crimes dropped off by more than 50%, according to FBI data.
Lincoln and Dover however were two communities that saw significant population growth without big increases in the number of police officers.
Dover added one officer to go from a force of 52 in 2000 to a force of 53 in 2020, an increase of about 2%. The town population increased by 20% to more than 32,000 people over the same period of time, according to Census data.
Lincoln added 1 position to go from 9 to 10 sworn officers in a 20 year period while the town’s population grew to 1,760 people, an increase of 38%
Laconia added five officers over a 20 year period to increase the size of its police department by 13%, while its population remained steady at about 16,500 residents. In addition, calls for service have decreased in Laconia over the last 10 years from 23,690 in 2011 to 16,924 in 2021.
In 2020, New Hampshire recorded the second-lowest violent crime rate in the country, according to FBI data.
As part of the Counting Cops series, most police departments said that they struggle to fill vacancies and they need more full-time officers to respond to increasing calls for service and growing populations, reported.
The Concord Police Department recently added two new patrol officers, bringing the force to 90. Before that addition, Concord increased the number of officers in its ranks by 20% between 2000 and 2020, following the trend seen statewide, despite an overall decrease in calls for service over the last 10 years.