I think part timers will be a thing of the past. Law enforcement will cost $$$ the smaller communities that rely on them.
Maybe not MSP but I could see more departments explore the idea of regionalizing resources, it seems they have been testing the waters for this for this over the last several years with department like:
Wachusetts Regional Dispatch who cover for West Boylston, Holden and Princeton.
Rutland Regional Dispatch who covers Rutland, Barre, Hubbardston and Oakham.
Nashoba Valley Regional who have been dispatching for not just for several towns, Lunenburg, Lancaster, Harvard, Devens Community, Bolton, Berlin, Townsend as well as Devens Military Police and MSP (C9).
I doubt it. Part timers cost a lot less money. What WOULD end part timers is if they ended sponsorship and only allowed hired cadets to attend the academy; no department is going to drop thousands of dollars and wait 6 months for a guy to only work 20 hours a week.
You are all correct but also keep in mind there would be a huge turnover rate. A smaller Town let us call it "Podunk, Ma" drops a chunk of change on a 21-year-old kid for the full-time academy only to have him/her bail after 6 months to go to a bigger municipality thus leaving the sponsoring town in the lurch and stuck with the bill.
I work only as a part-time LEO. The reason I can do this and remain financially stable is the fact Part-time police officers in my department have the first right of refusal for any all-open patrol shift. In exchange language was written into our union contract where full-time officers SHALL get offered ALL details first, if the detail cannot be filled by a full-time officer it is then paged out to the part-time officers and can then bid for the job.
Now on the flip side if a patrol shift cannot be filled with part-time officer it would be paged out to the full-time officers for overtime.
Now let us say if a patrol shift cannot be filled by either full or part-time officers, we will just drop down to one officer working alone the road, this can be either part-time or full-time guy. We normally try to run two guys per shift however we are down full-time position. I have been working there for some time now and I can count on one hand the times a full-time officer was ordered to stay. So, the idea of part-time jobs going away is highly unlikely at least in my department with all the vacation, personal, comp-time, sick time the full-time officers get per our union contract. All those open shifts would have to be filled by overtime, and most of the time that would be involuntary with officer who still have Quinn or a educational incentive.
And that's not mention open shifts due to full time vacancies, in-service training or if the detective, who also works patrol is working on an investigation they will call a third guy to cover.
That's a fuck load of a funding increase for just a 9 man full time police department in a town of about 3500 residents.