Back when the COVID-19 pandemic first struck, there was the now-infamous run on toilet paper, with Americans scrambling to secure massive stockpiles of the essential product that helps keep the world a better, cleaner place.
Police quartermasters were among the millions of people scrambling to keep the company commode amply furnished with Charmin, perhaps reciting to themselves the old joke about the toilets stolen from the police station leaving cops with “nothing to go on.” But now—two years into this madness and with a handful of complicated vectors factoring into the worsening supply-chain mess—police departments across the country are vexed by shortages of myriad needed supplies form ammunition to apparel, computers to cameras to cars.