The Smyrna Police Department has made significant progress in filling more than 30 open positions over the past year.

“At the beginning of the year, we were about 36 officers short; we are now down to about 11 officers short,” Major Louis Defense, Division Commander for the Office of Professional Standards, tells WSB. “Hopefully, by January 1, we’ll only have about five vacancies; if not, we may be able to fill all of them.”

The department has an authorized strength of 97 sworn officers to serve the city’s population of more than 55,000 residents. Like many departments around the county, Defense says the COVID pandemic and subsequent social justice protests contributed to declining staffing levels.

“[Full staff] means that you see not only more officers on the street, but then it allows us to put officers in more specialized positions,” he explains. “That helps when it comes to growing the agency and giving people other experiences other than uniform patrol.”

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