WILLEMSTAD – The Curaçao Police Force continues to struggle with serious staffing shortages, while an aging workforce is placing growing pressure on the organization’s long-term operational capacity. That is one of the findings in the 2025 State of Law Enforcement report.
According to the report, recruitment campaigns at schools and career fairs have failed to generate enough new officers to offset the growing number of retirements within the force.
The Council stated that a significant portion of police personnel is now over the age of fifty, creating concerns about long-term deployability and operational flexibility.
To accelerate recruitment, the duration of the basic police training program was shortened from three years to approximately two years. However, the report notes that the measure has not yet produced sufficient inflow to stabilize staffing levels.
The police force is also struggling to recruit specialists in cybercrime, financial investigations, and digital forensics.
Despite the personnel shortages, the report notes that the police did invest heavily in new equipment during 2025 using funding from the Crime Fighting Fund. New patrol vehicles, bicycles, ATVs, riot control vehicles, and other transport equipment were purchased to improve visibility and emergency response times.
The Council also noted that Curaçao police are increasingly being forced to intervene in social and administrative problems that fall outside their core policing duties, including housing conflicts, mental health crises, addiction-related incidents, and neighborhood disputes.
According to the report, this situation stems partly from weak administrative enforcement by other government ministries.