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The historic calls for police accountability, reform and attempts at racial reckoning have left police departments nationwide struggling to keep the officers they have and attract new ones to the force.
The crisis comes as many cities continue to grapple with the fallout from the pandemic and sharp increases in shootings and murders.
In many places, police morale has plunged and retirements and resignations have soared. A June survey of nearly 200 departments by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a nonprofit think tank, shows a startling 45% increase in the retirement rate and a nearly 20% increase in resignations in 2020-21 compared to the previous year.
“We are in uncharted territory right now,” PERF’s Executive Director Chuck Wexler says. “Policing is being challenged in ways I haven’t seen, ever.”
The exodus is affecting departments large, small and in between. The research group’s survey shows that in the largest departments with 500 hundred or more officers, the retirement rate increased by nearly 30%. Overall, new police hiring has dropped 5%.
And the timing of these staffing problems couldn’t be worse: multiple cities are seeing startling increases in shootings and murders just as more areas start to return to a sense of normalcy following 15 months of pandemic-induced disruptions. Large cities have seen a 24% spike in killings so far this year, following a more than 30% rise in homicides last year. Overall crime figures, however, went down during the pandemic.
RandyMarsh
Article URL : https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009578809/cops-say-low-morale-and-department-scrutiny-are-driving-them-away-from-the-job