Tim Jackson, Jametown police chief and public safety director, is making the argument for police consolidation even if he doesn’t know it yet.

Jackson wants the Jamestown Police Department to offer a $10,000 incentive to attract trained, certified police officers from other departments. Officers accepting the incentive would be required to work for the Jamestown Police Department for five years or pay back the bonus.

As we’ve said before, the city needs to look outside the box to bring in new officers, and this is merely one of many things the department has tried to fill open positions. The problem is simple math — officers are retiring at a higher rate than new trainees are coming out of police academies. Jackson told City Council members there are roughly five cadets at the Jamestown Community College Sheriff’s Academy, not enough to fill the city’s vacancies even if Jamestown hired all five.

Jamestown’s hiring incentive may help fill the city police department’s vacancies — but those officers will come from somewhere. And if those new officers come from Chautauqua County then all we’ve really done is shift the officer shortage from one department to another. It’s hard to imagine officers from Ellicott or Lakewood-Busti wouldn’t seriously consider Jamestown’s offer. Jackson could limit the offer to non-Chautuaqua County residents, but that also limits the incentive’s short-term impact.

It really makes sense, then, for the county’s elected officials to give serious thought to regional policing so that incentives like Jamestown’s don’t create problems for neighboring departments. It’s hard to believe having three police departments a veritable stone’s throw away from each other in Jamestown, Ellicott and Lakewood is the policing model we would have created for both the greater Jamestown area if we were starting from scratch in 2023.

Police staffing is a problem. Perhaps better pooling of resources can make hiring issues less painful for our regional police departments — or at least make it easier for some areas to deal with times when they are shorthanded.