"Least objectionable candidate".....Therein lies the problem. Either they're worth hiring or they're not. If you don't have anyone worth hiring you can either attract better people or close up shop. That's how it works for regular businesses and there's no reason a police department should be any different.
FWIW-I've never seen a community served by a three man department that wouldn't have been better off without a department at all.
Several of our local towns are biginning to think the same way and contracting with the county for police protection. That seems to work well most of the time.
But I do miss the days when our county had three deputies and many of the towns had one policeman. The one problem being that the one deputy on duty was often forty minutes away at the other end of the county when you needed him.
But folk often tended to be pretty self reliant in those days anyway.
People who choose to brew up their own storms bitch loudest about the rain.
