Major police departments across the country are reporting officer shortfalls in the hundreds. This after a year that saw massive protests, riots, and an uptick in anti-police attitudes. The decline of morale and the number of police officers in many major departments in the U.S. have coincided with large increases in crime — the number of murders committed increased in 51 of the 57 cities with public data reported. This from conservativedailynews.com.
- Police officers nationwide have quit in droves over the last year while law enforcement agencies have struggled to attract new recruits because of the increasingly “toxic” political environment, police groups said.
- “We are seeing a large number of officers leaving the force,” Fairfax County Police Association (FCPA) President Jeremy Hoffman told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “What’s just as disturbing as that is we’re having trouble recruiting.”
- More than 5,300 New York Police Department officers retired or quit in 2020, a 75% increase compared to 2019, while more than 200 officers quit the Seattle Police Department, citing the growing anti-police climate.
- “We are definitely at a critical manpower shortage here,” Louisville police union spokesperson Dave Mutchler said in an interview. “The climate that we all find ourselves in right now is a lot more demanding and stressful on officers.”
“We’re very worried,” National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) executive director and CEO Jonathan Thompson told the DCNF. “This may well have been the ulterior motive — to just make officers so uneasy and nervous to just retire and call it quits.”
Sheriffs in Minnesota and Wisconsin have reported “considerable morale challenges” since last summer, according to Thompson. He added that agencies in Arizona, New York and California have seen year-over-year retirements increase by up to 30%.
“The community shows zero support. The city council are raging idiots, in addition to being stupid. Additionally, the mayor and council ignore actual facts on crime and policing in favor of radical leftist and anarchists fantasy,” a former Portland Police Department detective wrote in his exit interview statement, according to The Oregonian.
In the wake of the death of George Floyd, who died while being arrested, hundreds of protests and riots took place nationwide demanding greater police accountability. Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree and third-degree murder earlier this month. The verdicts will certainly be appealed.
But police almost universally condemned Chauvin’s actions in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. The National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the largest police union in the U.S., applauded Chauvin’s conviction and said due process was served.
This perhaps is an example of even the police are not supporting the police when one of their own is in trouble for doing his job.
The protests sparked a movement to defund or cut funding for police departments. New York and Los Angeles notably cut funding for police while Minneapolis’ city council promised to completely “dismantle” its department.
“When you have a city council that is openly denigrating the men and women who are protecting them, and then turning around and insisting that they protect their house, it’s condescending, it’s terribly distracting, but it’s also demoralizing,” Thompson, the executive director and CEO of the NSA, told the DCNF.
Additional protests and riots came as a result of the death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by officers during a drug raid in Louisville, Kentucky, in March 2020. Taylor’s boyfriend fired the first gunshots during the late night raid.
Former Louisville police officer Brett Hankinson was charged with three counts of wanton endangerment for firing bullets into a nearby apartment during the gunfight, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced in September. The other officers, including the officer who killed Taylor, weren’t charged.
Roughly 230 officers have left the Louisville Metro Police Department in the last year, according to River City FOP Press Secretary Dave Mutchler. The department is now down to a total of around 1,070 officers even though its authorized strength is 1,325.
Where does America go from here?
“Cowards are all around us. From chiefs to sheriffs to politicians, no one has our back.” This from Travis Yates, a serving police commander in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is a doctoral student in Strategic Leadership, a graduate of the FBI National Academy, and the author of “The Courageous Police Leader: A Survival Guide for Combating Cowards, Chaos & Lies”. This article was first published in lawofficer.com. Yates also stated:
Now, the little we have, we are told they are going to defund us or even abolish us. Citizens with a political agenda will reign over us and all you have to do is wake up and put on a uniform to be a racist.
This weekend I received death threats for just doing my job. It would have been outrageous a decade ago and made national news.
It’s over America. You finally did it.
You aren’t going to have to abolish the police, we won’t be around for it.
And while I know most Americans still appreciate us, it’s not enough and the risk is too high.
Those of you that say thank you or buy the occasional meal, it means everything.
But those of you that were silent while the slow turning of the knives in our backs happened by thugs and cowards, this is on you.
Your belief in hashtags and memes over the truth has and will create an environment in your community that you will never expect.
If you think Minneapolis will never turn into Mogadishu – it’s coming.
And when it does, remember what your complicity did.
This is the America that you made.
Final note, no doubt America is in dire straits. Without a return to conservatism very quickly our beloved country will slide irretrievably into total chaos. Don’t think that one city after another won’t turn into it’s own little “Mogadishu.” There’ll be War Lords controlling square blocks of territory with gangs of thugs working for them who likewise will each carve out their own small piece of turf, e.g., a building or a floor of a building. The people remaining will be terrorized to no end but death.
Killing will be indiscriminate and human life will be without value. Personal property will be nonexistent beyond what you are able to carry with you as you run and fight for survival. Services we now take for granted will be nonexistent, i.e., plumbing, electric, gas, healthcare, sanitation, firefighting, and of course law enforcement. Commerce will no longer be in place. Survivors will steal and be stolen from. An exchange of items of value–a barter system–will be accomplished for the necessities. Bullets and shotgun shells will will be worth anything you need. Money will be worthless.
Eventually militias will become organized and their numbers of fighters will increase greatly. A door-to-door clean-up operation will commence and much energy will be expended to rid our cities of the cancer that destroyed them. In the meantime, however, tens of millions of people will die. America will likely be invaded by opportunist nations so what initially seems to be a white vs. black race war will become an us-against-them fight for survival.
My advice: Ammo up, get away from congested population centers, and by all means don’t go into large cities. Life in our cities will cease to exist. And God bless us everyone.
