When five police officers were killed in Dallas by a lone gunman during a Black Lives Matter protest, Dallas police chief David Brown put out a call to the community asking anyone to apply to join the police force.
According to a CBS news report, 467 people applied to join the Dallas Police Department, nearly a 250 percent increase in applications compared to the same time frame a month earlier.
Yet in south-central Wisconsin, applications for local police agencies are down, and while the decline in interest can be traced to before the Dallas attacks, law enforcement leaders believe the trend is related to such incidents.
Most believe national media portrayals of officer-involved shootings since Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and others in New Jersey, Ohio, Florida, Minnesota and South Carolina and several other states are affecting people who might otherwise pursue law enforcement as a career.
Yet those kinds of shootings are rare in the smaller communities of Columbia, Sauk and Juneau counties.