In 2020 – the latest year the data is available – 86% of police departments across the country reported staffing shortages.
Chicago defunded its police force in 2020 but returned the money this year with the inevitable rise in crime.
To bring awareness to the gun violence there, Pastor Corey Brooks of Project H.O.O.D. (Helping Others Obtain Destiny) has been camping out on top of eight shipping containers since mid-November and does not plan to come down until the end of February.
This year through Christmas Day, 793 people had been murdered in Chicago -- the most in almost 30 years.
"We never should talk about defunding them," Brooks told Fox News. "Our detectives are overwhelmed and are working very hard to solve these cases. Many times they don't have enough adequate resources."
With cities defunding the police, overzealous prosecution of officers, and the verbal and physical assaults and general public scorn, not many people want to join the force these days. In fact, Lt. Randy Sutton of The Wounded Blue recently told the "Today's Issues" program that no one did in St. Louis.
"The St. Louis Police Department recently gave a police test. Usually thousands of people will line up to take a police test. Not one person showed up in the city of St. Louis," Sutton reports. "That is unheard of."
He says a confluence of strikes is coming together in The Gateway City.
"They have an anti-law enforcement mayor, they have an anti-law enforcement district attorney, the media has been very negative towards law enforcement there, and now they're paying the price for it," says Sutton.
There have been the high-profile prosecutions of police officers, the latest being the guilty verdicts against Kim Potter for mistakenly shooting instead of tasing 20-year-old Daunte Wright while he was resisting arrest.
"Why get involved [when] you know that every time you have an interaction with another human being, it can possibly lead to a violent confrontation, which can lead to your arrest," Sutton poses.
Though funding is necessary, Pastor Brooks says money cannot fix everything.
"Just throwing money at problems never works. There needs to be all hands on deck, us coming together to try and figure out how to solve the issues of this violence," he told Fox News.
