Police are Leaving the Profession
Law enforcement agencies across the country experienced a wave of retirements and departures, and are struggling to recruit the next generation of police officers in the year since George Floyd was killed by a cop.
And amid the national reckoning on policing, communities are questioning who should become a police officer today.
Mass protests and calls for reforming or defunding the police, as well as the coronavirus pandemic, took their toll on officer morale. The rate of retirements at some departments rose 45% compared with the previous year, according to new research on nearly 200 law enforcement agencies conducted by the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum and provided to The Associated Press. At the same time, hiring slowed by 5%, the group found.
The wave comes as local lawmakers have pledged to enact reforms — such as ending the policies that give officers immunity for their actions while on-duty — and say they’re committed to reshaping policing in the 21st century. And recruiters are increasingly looking for a different kind of recruit to join embattled departments.
Two things:
- That different kind of recruit? They are shifting from brawn to brains. Or so they say, we’ll see.
- I would love, LOVE to see an analysis of those who are retiring or otherwise leaving and their disciplinary record / number of complaints from the public. Are we losing the good cops who truly try to stick to the rules, or are we losing the bullies?
I’m wondering if Jordan v. The City of New London will come up.
Like, not in comment sections, but when it comes to hiring new police. (I mean, it was never a “you can’t hire someone who scores high, you just don’t have to and if they score too high, you can use that as a reason to deny them the job” kinda thing.)
The main argument that I’ve heard in justification of Jordan v. The City of New London is that “smart” people psych themselves out and are willing to go down rabbit holes that merely average cops know how to avoid. No, the murder case was not going to be just like The Prisoner. There is no one-armed man.
Dunno how I feel about that.
In any case, if there is not just a correlation between the police stepping back and the recent homicide wave but also a connection, I imagine that we’ll find ourselves with one hell of a dialectic all over again. The democrats, for some reason, will likely be seen as the “defund the police” party.
There are signs that being painted as the “defund the police” party is bad.
Did you see Psaki’s pointing out that others might accuse Republicans of wanting to defund the police the other day? Good stuff!
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In this Ohio diner, the patrons feel it is bad to be viewed as the “beating police with American flags” party, and perhaps even worse to be viewed as the “the General is a stupid pig” party.Report
Sounds like the Democrats really have an opportunity to be the Pro-Police/Pro-Military party!Report
Looks like they’re running with it!
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My knee jerk reaction is good riddance.Report
That’s my considered reaction. Look at the recent “resignation” in Portland. Not a one of them willing to put their money where their mouths are.Report
This is why I would love to see an analysis of those leaving and the number of complaints and/or disciplinary actions.Report
So would I. But I have a feeling we’re not losing the best and the brightest. The likely characteristics of these departing cops would be: veterans who can afford to retire and who don’t want to change their ways. Based on that assumption I just keep goin back to “good riddance”.Report
Agreed, I suspect another set are the guys who want the veneer and respectability of being the ‘good guy’ while being able to be a bully and a$$hole.Report
And there I just typed good riddance again with feeling!Report
Why, though, would you assume we’re not losing the best? Without QI, the rain will fall on the just and the unjust. Or are we assuming that any civilian’s claims against police officers are necessarily true?Report
It’s the difference between those who do it as a calling, or even just a job, versus those who get off on the power trip.
As the public perception turns and the power and respect that adheres to the badge is lessened, the first out the door will be those for whom it was always about the power.Report
If we regularly hit them with boards, that’ll make absolutely sure that only the most dedicated ones will stay.Report
Pretty sure very almost no police officers are getting hit with boards, actual or metaphorical.
If cops want the public to trust and respect them, then they need to take action to actively police their own. They know who the bad cops are, and they tolerate them until well past the point the public can stomach them, then complain when the public starts thinking ACAB.
Why should we tolerate anything less than the most dedicated, considering the power they are given?Report
By the same reasoning, we should cut teachers’ salaries by half and expect them to turn on the bad ones.Report
Nobodies salaries got cut, CBAs are still in effect. Perhaps some overtime was reduced, but hey, police tend to abuse the hell out of that anyway.
But yes, if my school had bad teachers and the union and rank & file were aggressively protecting them behind the thin chalk line, I’d expect public opinions to turn… oh wait, that happened just recently during the pandemic, when teacher unions took the stance that teachers were more important than kids or working parents.Report
I figure the laziest are going to be inclined to stick around, the ones who avoid as many risky situations (like, say, police work) as possible. Maybe some people willing to coast to retirement.Report
And that is a problem why? Do we honestly expect police to do anything more than investigate crime that happens and clean up the mess.
Hell, unless there is a body, that is the only thing they clean up.
You are kind of implying that those on a power trip were somehow doing excellent police work, when they weren’t abusing their authority for kicks. Personally, I’ll take lazy cops who aren’t abusing their authority over cops who do.
Oh, and the ones who are actually good cops.
You know, during my time in the Navy, and after talking to old vets who served during the Vietnam era, no one likes the people who are critical of service members, but no one failed to re-up because of that. No, the primary driver of not re-enlisting was the command, not the civilians.
So if police are quitting, it’s probably because their command is telling them that sh*ts gotta stop, and command isn’t going to cover their a$$es as much.Report
I’m not just implying that those on a power trip do excellent police work, I’m explicitly saying that and it’s not a straw man at all. Oh, right, also when they’re not abusing their authority for kicks. I should make sure I add that.Report
You know what, PDs have spent a very long time hiring people who could physically do the job over whether they could mentally/emotionally do the job. That has to change, and if that change is accelerated by some of that old guard hanging up the hat, I’m good with that, even if they did ok police work.
Like I’ve said before, we need at least two PDs, those who deal with the day to day, and those who deal with the violent and dangerous. And those who deal with the dangerous and violent should not be handling the day to day, and vice versa.Report
Because the day to day never turns violent and dangerous? Because every call goes the way you expect, and domestic disputes always end calmly, and no one resists arrest?
We have meter maids for the really low hanging fruit, and SWAT for the worst situations, but everything between the deep pass and the run you need linebackers who can do anything.Report
Because things go sideways way, way less often than people think (because media reporting, yo!).
And hey, if it’s a situation that tends to go sideways, you can always have one of the tanks on hand, just standing by, looking like a, you know, a tank, while the day to day officer handles things.Report
In the absence of evidence that we’re losing the best I’m inclined to think we’re losing the worst. All else being equal the power tripping bullies, especially the older jaded ones who can retire, are more likely to readily exit than those who genuinely care about serving the community.
So unless/until we get info to suggest that the ones’ we’re losing are the goods ones my knee jerk reaction remains “good riddance”.Report
I think the best way to think of the issue is ‘build back better.’ A lot of addition by subtraction needs to happen, without a doubt. However I struggle to see how we get more professional, accountable police forces by turning cops from overzealous warriors into stigmatized, under-funded bureaucrats.Report
I mean, even pretending those were the only two options, the second group is going to kill a lot less people.
But I think, in general, we shouldn’t worry about going too far until the situation has first changed _in any manner whatsoever_.
The police really don’t have anyone but themselves to blame. They openly resisted any changes for decades, and so the pressure on them has been ramped up and ramped up and ramped up and literally nothing happened because they were completely unaccountable to anyone so could hold the line.
If we end up having to break them in half to get _anything_ to happen, well, they did that to themselves by refusing to yield at any point prior to that!
In fact, I could go as far as saying: If they hadn’t resisted the authorities, they wouldn’t have gotten hurt. 😉Report
I agree we have more than those two options and that there’s a certain comeuppance to the law enforcement community for spending decades fighting even minimal accountability. However I have no illusions about the politics of this. If voters see it as a choice between defund and law and order, law and order will certainly win and an important opportunity for reform will have been missed.Report
Is there really a partisan split on Law & Order/Status Quo, versus Defunding/ Reform?
There are large segments of both liberals and conservatives who favor either the status quo or at least very minor reform to the existing policing model.
And importantly, there are large segments of both liberals and conservatives who view the law enforcement agencies with skepticism at best, or outright hostility.
The difference is in their target- most liberals view local police with more suspicion than the federal agencies, while for conservatives its generally the reverse.Report
Were there any *SERIOUS* people who advocated for defunding the police? Was that even a thing? Sure, maybe you can find an example of someone tweeting that, but you can find people tweeting anything.Report
I’m not actually sure there are conservatives _leaders_ who are anti-Federal law enforcement?
Checking the Heritage Foundation and things they have said about the FBI, the way it works is, under Republicans, they are pro-FBI, and under Democrats, they are ‘anti-AG’ and ‘the Justice Department’, even when it’s the actual behavior of the FBI they are talking about.
I.e., the FBI is a pure and noble institution that is only corrupted by a bad attorney general.
In fact, that setup is why we know the name of a lot of Attorney Generals, whereas we generally don’t know the name of the head of the FBI unless everyone agrees something went wrong. (Looking at you, Comey.)
Like, conservatives blame Waco on Janet Reno and ‘Janet Reno’s Justice Department’. Not, you know, the FBI, the people who basically did everything and actually lied to Reno about child abuse to get authorization.
Now, of course, there are plenty of random conservatives who don’t like FBI. But I’m not sure there is any support of that from the leadership.
Now, the IRS OTOH…Report
Which is kinda my point, that a) the two parties are not symmetrical, and b) there isn’t really a defined partisan split with regard to Law & Order.
A)- The liberals think of policing in ideological and policy terms; QI, police unions, etc.
The conservatives (the base, not the pundits) are more tribal and situational. Derek Chauvin is a hero, but they will lynch the cop who shot Ashli Babbit.
Prosecutors who charge BLM protesters are good, while those who don’t are corrupt, and of course any agent of law enforcement that goes after Trump is a jackbooted thug.
B) For all the noise over BLM and defunding, the rank and file of Democrats aren’t too far distant from Republicans;
They tend to be more in favor of reform, but they aren’t hostile to the police and there is quite a deep well of 90’s vintage LawnOrder Democrats like, well, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The only partisan split I can see is one that uses law and order as a proxy for race; That is, Willie Horton stuff. But then again, almost every flashpoint for conservatives is a proxy for race or gender relations.Report
I don’t think the splits are primarily partisan. I think they line up more based on class and location (not to mention a big dollop of people for whom it is just not a priority regardless of what they think about the issue).Report
Colorado changed its law in 2020 and made officers financially liable for up to $25K of excess violence awards, and increased the chances of permanently losing their POST certifications in the event of repeated problems. (Permanent loss of POST makes it impossible for them to just get hired on in the next jurisdiction.) Everything I’ve read seems to be the rate officers are leaving has not increased, but it has become more difficult to hire new officers. Most write-ups quote police chiefs as saying, we don’t know if it’s the law, or that we’re trying to increase diversity, or that the cost of living has just exploded.Report
Exhibit:
Austin City Council cuts police department budget by one-third, mainly through reorganizing some duties out from law enforcement oversight
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/08/13/austin-city-council-cut-police-budget-defund/
The Austin City Council unanimously voted to cut its police department budget by $150 million on Thursday, after officers and the city’s top cop faced months of criticism over the killing of an unarmed Black and Hispanic man, the use of force against anti-police brutality protesters and the investigation of a demonstrator’s fatal shooting by another citizen.
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The proposal to cut police funding by about one-third of its total $434 million budget calls for immediately cutting around $21.5 million from the department, according to a document put together by council members. But city spokesperson Andy Tate said Thursday that the number was closer to $20 million.
These immediate cuts would include eliminating funding from three planned police cadet classes and reallocating funds to areas like violence prevention, food access and abortion access programs.
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Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday that the council’s actions represent the triumph of political agendas over public safety, and vowed that the Texas Department of Public Safety will “stand in the gap” to protect Austin until the state Legislature can take up the issue next session.
So, as with the other reform actions being taken, we will see whether this can withstand the “Crime is Outta Control!! Thin Blue Line!!!” hysteria.Report
Worth reiterating that more than half of those cuts involve moving civilian divisions, like victim services and the crime lab (which APD has fucked up miserably) out of the police department, and aside from a couple delayed cadet classes, doesn’t really affect the number of cups on the force.Report
I think I see the problem…Report
Thatis in collective bargaining agreement (which isn’t actually called that here): While they can reduce the budget, the cops have to get as many cups as they had before.Report
Seattle is Dying makes the point that a lot of the police losses were due to hopelessness.
Minneapolis lost a lot of their good cops in the same way.
(Note: Losses incurred in the last decade, moreso than the last two years)Report
Anyone here want to be the guinea pigs as politicians radically reform policing in the 21st century? Because, there will be bad judgments, and they may very well cost people their lives and jobs.
I mean, there is a really obvious thing here. How many people want to enter a filed that is in a state of radical reform, where errors endanger your life, and where you have absolutely no say in the reforms that happen. I know if I was applying for a job and they said ‘well we are really in a state of restructuring right now, and we really don’t know what the job will look like in a couple years’… would you opt in?
Likewise, if you are in, and nearing retirement and they are saying ‘hey, we are going to restructure everything you have ever known, and just in time for you to figure out the system we land on you will retire… so you are going to work extra hard to learn a series of systems and you will never see a return on that investment. Would you not retire? My mom did when her community college did that exact thing.
I mean, rather than seeing this as some great ideological, cultural, issue why not start by looking at it like hiring in any other profession?Report
I have no desire to be a guinea pig. I rather expect that my housing prices will be driven up by people who also have no such desire.
We don’t have to be guinea pigs, though! We can just say “Oh, look at this city here. We should do *THAT*.”
Give me a city and tell me “we need to have our police departments set up something like this”.
The argument that goes something to the effect of “our police departments need to be utopian” is one of those things that will have me smile and nod and say “Okay, sure” but I’m not interested in modeling our police departments on a place that doesn’t exist.
We should be more like X.
Where’s X?Report
This is just not the reality of how this kind of change works on the ground. Models can help to reduce transition costs, but radical reform of public institutions is simply unpleasant for employees, long, and best with risks. And, as of now, there are now models that are so clearly good (because most having operated long enough yet) to even know. And since we are in a big hurry….
These kind of changes take years, even when you have a clear model you are transitioning to. During that time everyone – especially your superiors – are learning new things and fucking up and passing the blame to you. It sucks. It sucks balls. IT’s true in every bureaucratized profession. IT is particularly true in the public sector professions.Report
Well, it strikes me that the reality of how this kind of change works on the ground will be “Look at the murder rate. Gimme money. Don’t tell the cops to change! Tell the community to change! Gimme money.”
In practice, I mean.
If I may repeat myself:
Last year provided one heck of a utilitarian calculus.
Last year’s murder rates jumped over 2019’s.
NPR:
Fox News via The New York Post:
If you want to read long-form speculation on why it’s happening, who better than Vox? In the Vox article, there’s a section called “We know less about why there’s a spike, but there are some theories” that you should check out but here are the answers (without the paragraphs that go into explaining each answer):
1) The pandemic has really messed things up
2) Depolicing led to more violence
3) Lack of trust in police led to more violence
4) More guns led to more gun violence
5) Overwhelmed hospitals led to more deaths
6) Idle hands led to more violence
7) A bad economy led to more violence
It’s probably some combination of multiple ones of those, but if it’s mostly because of 1, 5, 6, and 7, then that’s pretty much good news. The Pandemic is thiiiiiis close to being over and by, oh, 2022, everything should be 100% back to normal with movie theaters and going out to Chili’s for fajitas and whatnot.
If it’s 3, then the cops have a lot of work to do.
If it’s 4, then they have a lot of work to do and 3 is a pre-req.
If it’s 2? Well, 2 is unlikely to create a stable equilibrium. It’s eventually going to result in multiple shifts in public policy. Among those will be even more protections for the police.
Keep your fingers crossed for 1, 5, 6, and 7.Report
Vaguely related:
You think we should change the cops?
At a moment when gun violence is at its worst?
We need *MORE* cops! With better equipment! AND BETTER FUNDING!
This doesn’t call for social workers.
We need house-to-house searches for guns!
And so on.
Anyway, I think that police reform will have an uphill battle.
(I’m a fan of all kinds of reforms, from getting rid of QI to getting rid of asset forfeiture to getting rid of no-knock warrants to busting police unions. But I also know that the window for doing any of that was quite small and, sadly, “Defund The Police” was a catchier slogan and now it appears that the window has closed.)Report
This is a good point, that a lot of cops who are comfortable with the status quo may decide to retire rather than face reforms.
Another thought is that young people who are looking for careers but are repulsed by the status quo may decide to opt in to a reformed police force.Report
That’s funny, given how much of a say the PD Unions have to block or gut any reforms put forth.Report
Have you worked in the unionized public sector. Because, as someone who has, what you say *is really funny*. 😀Report
Yes, I have.
What’s funny is that you think unionized public sector aligns nicely with police unions.
All other public sector unions WISH they had the kind of power and influence police unions have.Report
I don’t have any strong opinions about this comment, but for the record it’s not me.Report
Good to know BB. I was actually squinting at the picture and wondering to myself. That being said I welcome all Brandons to comment as much as possible. All you other cardinal direction names, though, can fish off *brandishes a broken beer bottle*!Report
We’re still cool though, right?Report
Secondary intercardinal directions are a-ok with me! *fistbump*Report
“Anyone here want to be the guinea pigs as politicians radically reform policing in the 21st century?”
Sure, but we can start with 19th Century reform. Peelian Principles would be a good start, and I think we can all agree that 200 years of them being in place offers some real data there.
“Because, there will be bad judgments, and they may very well cost people their lives and jobs.”
So that’s a step up from the status quo, which is DEFINETLY costing people their lives and their jobs.
” How many people want to enter a filed that is in a state of radical reform, where errors endanger your life, and where you have absolutely no say in the reforms that happen”
I would hope, hand to God, a very different sort of person than has been pulled into the profession of late.Report
OH, I think you may be misunderstanding my point. I am not trying to imply *any* judgement on the final state of reforms themselves, or the necessity for them. I am – basically – fairly radical on the need for criminal justice reform generally.
My point is about the labor market for cops and the realities of any bureaucratized profession going through major restructuring.
Think of my point like this analogy. You are working for 20 years or apply to work at a company in its original building. You walk in to talk about whether or not you want to retire/want a new job and you are told ‘well, great things are coming in 5 years. The new building will look like this *shows gleaming building*, and we will be restructiong how we do things from teh ground up because the technology has changed and we have far outgrown our prior model. But, between now and then, it’s going to be a good deal of change, plans being implimented, unexpected problems that pop us solved, and – by the way – there is some small change that all this construction may mean peril for you. But so long as you follow all the rules, we are prety sure you will be fine.
This the reality of major changes. They entail transition costs. And, the reality and peril of these transition costs are being blared out across every major media outlet for a year…. just in case anyone in the back didn’t hear.
That’s my point. And, I think you are unlikely to attract the best during such a period… particularly in a business where those individuals will have virtually no voice for shaping their jobs.
I hope that is clearer.Report
My suspicion:
The murder rate creeping up will do an excellent job of providing a counter-argument against those who argue that the only reasons to implement the old model of law enforcement are ones that reflect poorly on the old society.Report