Minn. Town of 800 Ends Police Force as Rural Hiring Crisis Worsens

BLACKDUCK, MN—This small northern Minnesota city surrounded by pines has had a Police Department since 1910, when there was a jail in City Hall and a constable walked the streets telling kids to get home at dark.

That long tradition of local policing faded years ago in Blackduck and it’s about to end altogether.

With just one squad car, a part-time police chief and one part-time officer, the city of 800 people north of Bemidji is calling it quits on its Police Department. Council members voted unanimously on the closure this month, becoming the latest in a long line of Minnesota cities to make the move.

Since 2016, around 40 police agencies have closed in the state. It’s a trend most pronounced across rural areas, where departments are unable to offer competitive wages or fill open positions with a shrinking field of applicants that can’t match the pace of retirements.

Cities are giving up a local police presence and in many cases contracting with county sheriff’s offices for certain hours of coverage from deputies instead. Others are combining with neighboring small-town departments. A few are simply hoping deputies aren’t far away if they dial 911.

Although small towns are often seen as safer places than large cities, local police can add to residents’ peace of mind.

The department disbandments are putting pressure on understaffed sheriff’s offices, too, which are called to serve more cities.

“Those departments, if history is telling us anything, are unfortunately heading for extinction,” said Jim Mortenson, executive director of Law Enforcement Labor Services, Minnesota’s largest public safety labor union.

“Some of these communities start to lose their identities when they lose their police departments.”

In 2020, following the police killing of George Floyd, Mortenson said a thousand cops in Minnesota walked away from the profession and they haven’t filled that gap since.

When national headlines were all about Minneapolis looking to disband police, this trend had already been taking hold across greater Minnesota for decades.

The Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training reported a steady decline in police agencies across the state in the past 10 years, from Eagle Lake in southern Minnesota to Moose Lake up north.

A dozen departments dissolved in 2017 alone. Between 2023 and 2025, nine closed. The majority now rely on their local sheriff’s office.

“I’ve told people that, you know, just because I’m not alone in the boat doesn’t mean I’m happy it’s sinking,” Blackduck Mayor Maxwell Gullette said.

Beltrami County Sheriff Jason Riggs echoes what the City Council and folks around the town of 800 are saying.

“I don’t want to see the Blackduck Police Department fold,” Riggs said. “I worked there. I enjoyed my time there.”

He served as mayor and police chief in the early 2000s before joining the Sheriff’s Office, where starting hourly wages are $37 compared to $22 as a cop in Blackduck.

He’s been in discussion with the city about a contract, but those details still need to be worked out and Blackduck must rescind its police ordinance to move forward with disbandment.

The part-time chief and officer are Riggs’ deputies who work 20 hours per month as Blackduck police in addition to their deputy jobs. A typical contract between a city and the county assigns a deputy to work 40 hours a week, which would provide more coverage than what Blackduck is currently receiving.

Riggs said his office will need to hire another deputy to patrol Blackduck once the department disbands. His office also has had difficulty finding new hires; they have three openings and one pending retirement. The cost of training deputies only to lose them quickly is also expensive.

“The issue is a lot of agencies, especially in greater Minnesota, are having a tough time finding people,” Riggs said.

The POST board lists 106 departments looking to hire officers, which is over 25% of departments statewide. At the same time, colleges that specialize in law enforcement have low enrollment.

Blackduck levies taxpayers between $212,00 to $290,000 annually for 1.5 full-time employees. If the city contracts with the county, that fee is $25,000 to $40,000 less.

City Council members said they can’t keep budgeting for a position they can’t fill.

“We have a shell of a Police Department,” Council Member Ronald Fredrickson said.

They haven’t received any applications since the last full-time officer left in November to work at the Sheriff’s Office.

When cities don’t contract with a Sheriff’s Office after disbanding, there’s no consistent law enforcement presence. But even with a contract, the coverage area is often vast and affects response time.

A deputy’s beat can be more than 400 square miles, sometimes requiring a half-hour drive or more to respond to an emergency call.

“You can see the problem that’s going to happen,” Mortenson said. “They cannot be in every place at one time.”

Some cities have decided to join in partnerships instead. The Centennial Police Department formed in 2000 between the cites of Lexington, Circle Pines and Centerville in the north suburbs of the Twin Cities. But combining departments is harder for rural, spread-out towns.

These arrangements can also cannibalize a local law enforcement community.

In southern Minnesota, the Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Office stepped in to help run the Lake Crystal Police Department in 2012. But after signing a contract with another city, it had to abandon that arrangement.

Sheriff Jeff Wersal said the agency didn’t have the staff in 2025 to continue to cover there.

That was partly because the county had taken on policing in Eagle Lake, 5 miles east of Mankato, which disbanded its department in 2023. Eagle Lake now has three deputies under contract who work 40 hours a week there.

After the end of its contract with the Blue Earth Sheriff’s Office in August, Lake Crystal hired the police chief from nearby Madelia.

Then Madelia’s Police Department closed because of persistent staffing shortages. The city was down to two full-time police officers last year.

This year, Madelia started a $540,000 annual contract with the Watonwan County Sheriff’s Office, down from a Police Department budget of about $700,000 a year in 2025. The county will be on the hook for the costs of training, administration and insurance.

“We have the same schedule, the same coverage that there was when there was the Police Department,” Madelia Mayor Cody Eager said. ”You’re wearing brown instead of blue now.”

Emotions ran high at a forum in October as residents worried about what would happen.

“You would have thought the world was ending. ... I was scared as heck,” said Eager, adding that he lost friends as a result of the decision to disband.

Madelia’s former police chief, Rob Prescher, spent 25 years on the force, 16 as chief.

A rural police department may have fewer calls than in the metro, but it often ends up more connected, Prescher said. He became deeply enmeshed in the community, learning the names of almost everyone in town to provide a presence and peace of mind.

“In a small town, you’re the police chief, you’re the social worker, you’re the extra parent keeping an eye on kids at night. ... You’re the local dog catcher. You’re the one they call when they need someone to speak to the Boy Scouts,” Prescher said.

He spent much of his time recruiting, only for new hires to pull up stakes after a year or two for a raise elsewhere. Prescher said he still feels guilty about making that same decision, because leaving for Lake Crystal led to the end of his department.

“I kind of let everybody down,” he said. “It’s kind of my fault.”

Riggs, in Beltrami County, said it’s bitter seeing his former post in Blackduck fade, but he believes a contract will provide more consistent coverage to the community he served back when he was cutting his teeth in law enforcement.

“The buck stops with me. I’ll have to answer that challenge by taking on the contract,” he said.

There wasn’t much pushback at council meetings in Blackduck, like there was in Madelia. Only a handful of residents showed up at a meeting in March. When the vote was finalized, there were no residents in the audience.

Over at the Pond, Blackduck’s municipal bar, locals talked about the decision over bottles of Busch Light, saying it’s not all that big of a change considering the city hasn’t had much of a police force for years.

Mark Benson, a logger and farmer born and raised in Blackduck, said the city is a stepping stone for new officers.

“Nobody will stay,” he said, adding that this is the case in rural areas struggling to attract all sorts of workers.

He’s concerned that the absence of a police department would deter families from moving to town, and potentially leave remaining businesses and residents vulnerable.

“The presence,” he said, “means more than writing tickets.”

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