If you haven't talked to a city cop lately, let me fill you in: Whether mad or sad, they have nothing good to say about working for the Dallas Police Department.

Three recent conversations inspire zero confidence that Dallas can easily overcome its difficulties in hiring new officers to replace the hundreds it has hemorrhaged over the last year or so.

I've heard plenty of grousing from cops before, but both the message and the vehemence of these latest exchanges was striking. If this is what the rank and file is saying about their own department, why would anyone want to join?

Two officers gave me an earful last month after stopping to help sort out a fender-bender in East Dallas. As we stood in the rain waiting for a wrecker — me offering repeated thanks for their service — here's what they wanted to talk about: "Why does everyone hate us?"

After I identified myself as a DMN writer, they had even more to say: About police being cast as the bad guys in the pension controversy. About not having support from City Hall or from new boss Chief U. Renee Hall. About the wrong-headed reorganization at police headquarters.

Hall is only a little more than six months into her new job, but these street cops have made up their minds: Everything within DPD is heading in the wrong direction. They believe Dallas officers have been kicked to the curb and the best strategy is to try to follow their colleagues who have already relocated to suburban jobs.

No wonder Dallas is having difficulties luring recruits.

This exchange, and two more in other Dallas neighborhoods, is no scientific survey. But it does provide three identical data points. And while the officers' version of things is inflated, Hall would be foolish to think these sentiments will just go away if she ignores them.

It sounds as if Dallas cops are fielding plenty of enticing phone calls from buddies now established elsewhere. That's the last thing we need in a city where the police department is only at 34 percent of its hiring goal for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Law enforcement departments everywhere are in a bad spot, with all the concerns about policing tactics. Things in Dallas are even worse because of the pension system's dire insolvency problems. Benefits cuts and contribution increases already led far too many of our city's finest to stampede for the exit door.

More recently, Hall's decision to demote five chiefs, including two popular leaders who were finalists for the job she won, didn't go over well. Two of the five who were knocked down, assistant chiefs Gary Tittle and John Lawton, are departing for other North Texas posts, leaving big experience gaps in an already struggling department.

Many of these critics are no doubt the same officers who have long complained that the command staff is too bloated. But these frustrations are still part of the reality that Hall and her bosses at City Hall need to confront.

Likewise, they need to address officers' concerns that while Hall has become a local celebrity of sorts with her numerous speeches and community events, she is less convincing when it comes to strategies and tactics in police work.

For example, the average DPD response time for the highest priority calls was 8.47 minutes last year. It was 7.77 minutes in 2016. That needs to be fixed, but it's a delicate balancing act as important investigative work languishes if holes are filled by moving detectives to patrol.

What I found most troubling was that these cops seem exactly the kind of officers we want to keep on the force — smart, professional, unflappable, caring.

Yet they all feel the department, the city and the city's residents have abandoned them. It was hard to reconcile the spirit of excellent service they exhibited with the bewilderment, frustration and, at times, anger they expressed about their bosses.

Morale can have a dramatic — and bad — impact. So regardless of whether the underlying facts are all true, Hall would be wise to turn her energies to the concerns of the rank and file. She needs to inspire not just our city, but its cops as well.

What's your view?

Got an opinion about this issue? Send a letter to the editor, and you just might get published.