NY Times: Say, Have Y’all Noticed That A Lot Of Police Officers Have Left The Job?

A rather good, almost honest article from the NY Times on cops leaving their jobs over the last year, with the defund the police movement and the blame from politicians heavily minimized

Why Police Have Been Quitting in Droves in the Last Year

As protests surged across the country last year over the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, Officer Lindsay C. Rose in Asheville, N.C., found her world capsized.

Various friends and relatives had stopped speaking to her because she was a cop. During a protest in June around Police Headquarters, a demonstrator lobbed an explosive charge that set her pants on fire and scorched her legs.

She said she was spit on. She was belittled. Members of the city’s gay community, an inclusive clan that had welcomed her in when she first settled in Asheville, stood near her at one event and chanted, “All gay cops are traitors,” she said.

By September, still deeply demoralized despite taking several months off to recuperate, Officer Rose decided that she was done. She quit the Police Department and posted a sometimes bitter, sometimes nostalgic essay online that attracted thousands of readers throughout the city and beyond.

“I’m walking away to exhale and inhale, I’m leaving because I don’t have any more left in me right now,” she wrote. “I’m drowning in this politically charged atmosphere of hate and destruction.”

Where was the hate coming from? That’s somewhat glossed over, as the Times certainly wants to take a soft approach and not make their leftist, cop hating readership mad

Officer Rose was hardly alone. Thousands of police officers nationwide have headed for the exits in the past year.

A survey of almost 200 police departments indicated that retirements were up 45 percent and resignations rose by 18 percent in the year from April 2020 to April 2021 when compared with the previous 12 months, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington policy institute.

New York City saw 2,600 officers retire in 2020 compared with 1,509 the year before. Resignations in Seattle increased to 123 from 34 and retirements to 96 from 43. Minneapolis, which had 912 uniformed officers in May 2019, is now down to 699. At the same time, many cities are contending with a rise in shootings and homicides.

And then these same cities saw their crime skyrocket, including murder and attempted murder. Surprise!

The fact that the protests were directed at them pushed many officers to quit, he said. “They said that we have become the bad guys, and we did not get into this to become the bad guys.”

A sense that the city (of Asheville) itself did not back its police was a key reason for the departures, according to officers themselves as well as police and city officials. Officers felt that they should have been praised rather than pilloried after struggling to contain chaotic protests.

And that’s pretty much the only mention. Defund the police? One quick mention later. The police in Asheville, who were initially praised after dealing with the unhinged, violent protests, were then pilloried by the police chief and mayor. We saw the video: the police were being attacked, violence was going on, and the high mucky-mucks expected the officers to essentially say “pretty please, stop” to these nutjobs.

To make do, the A.P.D. has trimmed its services even as shootings and other violent crimes escalated, a trend that has been seen across the country and which many experts have connected to disruption from the pandemic. The police received about 650 calls for “shots fired” last year, Chief Zack said, and there were 10 homicides, compared with seven the year before. Aggravated assaults were also up.

The department shuttered a downtown satellite office, stopped bicycle patrols and is making fewer traffic stops. It published a list of 10 incidents to which it would no longer dispatch officers, including some vehicle thefts, and urged citizens to file simple complaints online rather than calling.

All but one of the seven officers who investigated domestic violence and sexual assault left, so the department is trying to get three officers up to speed on the skills needed.

Asheville isn’t Portland or Chicago: it’s a very nice, middle of nowhere city in the NC mountains that was once very safe, a wonderful weekend destination for so many. Now? Neighborhood Scout ranks it a 1, which is the worst number a city can get. That’s worse than Chicago. Violent crime is double the NC and US rates, and property crime is almost 3 times the NC and US rates. All those people who caused problems and want to slam the cops, defund them, abuse them in Asheville? They should be required to stay, so they can deal with the fallout of their policies.