IT’LL BE DIFFERENT THIS TIME BABY, I’VE REALLY CHANGED: Portland offered to rehire dozens of recently retired police officers, only 2 expressed interest.

Related: Police Departments Are Losing Officers and Struggling to Replace Them.

Columbus, Wis., a city of about 5,500 people between Madison and Milwaukee, lost three members of its nine-person police force last year. Unable to find replacements, Chief Dennis Weiner has taken on extra duties, including working a patrol shift on Thanksgiving Day.

“It has really just been a terrible struggle trying to fill vacancies,” said Mr. Weiner of his efforts since one officer started a painting business, another took a maintenance job at a distribution center, and a third began studying to become an accountant.

Across the country, police chiefs say they are struggling to keep departments fully staffed as resignations increase and hiring gets tougher in a tight labor market. At the same time, officers describe the job as more stressful and less rewarding than it was in the past. As a result, the chiefs say, departments are taking longer to respond to some calls while crimes including homicide are on the rise nationwide. . . .

Some officers say they soured on the job after some police budgets were cut in the midst of “defund the police” movements that were supported by Black Lives Matter protesters. Others said that after high-profile deaths of Black men at the hands of police in recent years, interactions with community members became more confrontational.

John LaValley, a former police officer in Green Bay, Wis., said he was regularly called a Nazi and white supremacist while on patrol and eventually became suicidal. He quit in 2017 and worked for a time as a freight conductor for a railroad.

“I just lost the mental capacity, not only to handle and mitigate the violence that you see, but this perception of constant negativity,” he said.

You don’t have to defund the police, you can just demoralize them.