Amidst staffing shortages, the Grinnell Police Department is finding it harder to carry out enforcement, according to the agency’s chief, Michael McClelland—a reality increasingly visible in the city’s most recent police data.
The monthly report, released Sept. 18, generated through the department’s Central Square records management system, shows the department responded to 781 calls for service in August, resulting in 24 arrests, 38 citations and 42 warnings.
The number coincides with staffing shortages at the department, which is now down to eight officers, from a high of 15 in the spring of 2022. This follows a national trend of police candidates dropping nationwide, with difficulties most severe in the Midwest and Northeast, where around 80 percent of agencies reported staffing issues, according to a 2024 survey from the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
The shortage has forced McClelland to change how officers operate.
“Are my officers going to go out and do a lot of DUI enforcement?” McCelland said. “Probably not, because a DUI arrest takes up to two to three hours. And when I only have two officers on per shift, that takes away one person that’s by themselves”
McClelland, who has served in the role since January 2021, said the reports are important both for the public and for the department itself.
“One, it tells the public, here’s what your police department is doing… but it also tells me on a monthly basis which one of my officers are productive, which ones aren’t, that kind of thing,” McClelland said.
The report also shows bias-based information that tracks the ethnicity, gender and race of people who are arrested or receive citations and warnings.
In arrests, citations and warnings, white people are most often cited, which, according to McClelland, reflects more the makeup of Grinnell than police practice.
McClelland said most calls don’t lead to tickets or arrests because the Grinnell Police Department is “more of a community policing department.” Officers, he explained, “only write tickets when they feel they need to… When we make traffic stops for traffic violations, we like to educate instead of giving tickets.”
Overall, calls for service are down from last year, while arrests grew. There were 881 calls in August 2024 but only 781 in August 2025, a drop of 11.35 percent. There were 24 arrests in August 2025, but only 18 arrests in August 2024.
McClelland credited the drop in calls partially to the work of the department’s new mental health liaison, Faith Repp. “Faith will actually get up with us and go to the call. And instead of us taking police action, she’ll actually take that call, write notes, contact her resources, the hospital and she’ll do follow-up with them to get them help.”
For the last three years, the department has been working on accreditation from the Commission on Law Enforcement Accreditation (CALEA), a move, McClelland said, is intended to show Grinnell Police officers don’t “run by the seat of our pants… we actually follow procedures and the best practices in the country.”
CALEA is expected to vote on accreditation this November.
