It just feels so petty. Not a single person reading "less cops" was confused by its meaning. I get fighting against misuse of your/you're, its/it's, etc. because they can make things harder to read. Fewer and less, though, have the exact same underlying meaning (a reduction).

This one isn't even real. "Fewer" can only refer to countable things, but "less" can refer to both countable and uncountable things, and has been used that way for hundreds of years. It has never been wrong to say "less."

They aren't "lost", because they were never yours to be "fighting" in the first place..

I’m a grammar loving curmudgeon. Even I check myself more often than not after I realized the kind of classist tones that come through when arguing against lexicon.

Me trying to get people to say they "are doing well" not "doing good" when asked "how are you doing?"

Language prescriptivism is a useless endeavour, let the language evolve as it wants, I personally don't mind the use of less in this situation

Yeah, they used less words

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fewer-vs-less

Essentially, fewer is normally used for discrete numbers of things (e.g. "fewer apples", "fewer boats", or "fewer cops") while less is used for amounts (e.g. "less water", "less sand", or "less money").

As noted in the above link, there are exceptions. However, the exceptions listed are all with "than" or "or" added. Specifically, it's pointing put that while "fewer items" is correct, "3 items or less" is also considered correct.

In the case of the sign, it is referring to the specific number of officers in the city, so it should use "fewer". Does it matter? No, not really. Why did I bother saying anything? I got a chance to rep grammar and quote Stannis Baratheon at the same time.