More Police Officers Have Retired Or Quit In The Past Year Than Ever Before, New Survey Shows

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Anybody who wasn’t living under a rock last summer surely remembers the wave of anti-police sentiment that swept across the US. The end result, as we have reported before, is that thousands of cops from departments across the country have been quitting in droves. Now, a survey of nearly 200 police departments indicates that retirements rose 45% and resignations rose by 18% in the year between April 2020 and April 2021.

The survey data were disclosed to the NYT, which published them as the centerpiece of a lengthy story about the trials and tribulations facing police departments across the US.

During the period in question, the NYPD saw 2,600 officers retire, compared with 1,509 the year before. Resignations in Seattle increased to 123 from 34, and retirements have risen to 96 from 43.

Minneapolis, the former department of Officer Derek Chauvin, had 912 uniformed officers in May 2019. They’re now down to just 699 sworn officers, and the department is struggling to find suitable recruits for its next class at the police academy.

All of this is happening amid a backdrop of worsening violent crime in America’s cities.

According to the NYT, one of the hardest-hit urban departments is the Asheville Police Department, a hip and deep-blue speck in mostly-red western North Carolina. Asheville is a growing community of 90K ticked into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Some have described it as the Portland of the South. Asheville became the locus of anti-police protests in the area last year. In June, the city council agreed to earmark $2.1MM to start paying reparations to the black community (about 10K of the city’s 90K residents).

Asheville Police Chief David Zack, 58, told the NYT that the surge in contempt from the community pushed many officers to quit. “They said that we have become the bad guys, and we did not get into this to become the bad guys.” The sense that the city “did not back its police” was inescapable. – READ MORE

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