Posted on by Californiacontrarian

A Blast From the Past

This was written and posted on my blog over two years ago, and now we are seeing the long term consequences of belittling our police, especially when the rubber meets the road in big cities.

Shortage ? . . . “Duh!”

Many US cities are having difficulty keeping police officers.

Is this a surprise after all the anti-police rhetoric lately? … Duh!

From the Blaze:

Philadelphia:

The Philadelphia Police Department currently has 268 vacancies and is expecting even more shortages in the near future.

“From Jan. 1 through Apr 22, 79 Philadelphia officers have been accepted into the city’s Deferred Retirement Option Program, meaning they intend to retire within four years, according to Mayor Jim Kenney’s office,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. “During the same time period last year, just 13 officers had been accepted into the program, the office said.”

“It’s the perfect storm. We are anticipating that the department is going to be understaffed by several hundred members, because hundreds of guys are either retiring or taking other jobs and leaving the department,” Mike Neilon, spokesperson for the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, told the newspaper.

New Jersey:

New Jersey is facing a “recruiting crisis,” according to Pat Colligan, president of the New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association.

Col. Patrick Callahan, the acting superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said the state’s largest police agency received a “historically low” number of applications this year. In some years, the New Jersey State Police would usually receive between 15,000 to 20,000 applications – this year they only received 2,023 qualified applicants as of 4/22,21 according to NJ.com.

Baltimore:

The Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 said there were “recruitment and retention issues,” which prompted the “topic of closing police district(s).”

“Our Patrol numbers are now below 700 officers which is about 300-400 below what is needed,” the Baltimore FOP said, according to WBFF-TV. “This creates huge safety issues for our officers and for the citizens of Baltimore.”

Los Angeles:

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) is proposing to increase the budget of the Los Angeles Police Department amid skyrocketing violent crime and increased vacancies within the department.

From Fox News:

Louisville:

Statistics provided by LMPD on Tuesday show the department has hired 26 new members so far this year, while 43 have left. The 1,069-person department falls 255 people short of its “authorized strength” of 1,324 — the number of personnel it is authorized to employ, statistics show.

Meanwhile as of 4/25/21 there had been 84% more non-fatal shootings so far this year, with 201, compared to the 109 instances reported during the same time in 2020, LMPD statistics show. There were 56 murders reported as of Sunday — a 75% increase from the 32 reported by April 25, 2020.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Minneapolis:

In Minneapolis, about 40 officers retired last year, and another 120 took leaves of absence. That’s nearly 20% of a police department with about 840 officers in the city. Police officials are waiting to see whether the leaves of absences in the Minnesota city become retirements.

Chicago:

In Chicago, 560 officers retired in 2020 in a police department that had about 13,100 sworn officers as of March, records show. That’s about 15% more cops retiring than during the previous year, when the number of retirements rose by nearly 30%.

John Catanzara, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police union, said he can’t see how the police department’s recruiting can keep pace with the retirements and pointed to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s latest budget, which eliminated 614 police vacancies.

“They have just made policing in this city and state near-impossible,” the police union boss said. “They have given control to the criminals.”

And from FreedomWire the coup de grâce:

New York:

In New York City, the nation’s largest metropolitan area, cops are retiring from/quitting the NYPD at alarming rates following last summer’s anti-policing riots, which have continued unabated this year.

The New York Post reported, “More than 5,300 NYPD uniformed officers retired or put in their papers to leave in 2020 — a 75 percent spike from the year before, department data show.

The exodus — amid the pandemic, anti-cop hostility, riots, and a skyrocketing number of NYC shootings — saw 2,600 officers say goodbye to the job and another 2,746 file for retirement, a combined 5,346.

In 2019, the NYPD had 1,509 uniformed officers leave and 1,544 file for retirement, for a total of 3,053.

The departures and planned departures of 5,300 officers represents about 15 percent of the force. Already, as of April 5, the NYPD headcount of uniformed officers has dropped to 34,974 from 36,900 in 2019.

All of these cities and many more are losing cops. Is it going to be a long deadly summer this year . . . “Duh!”

5/20/23

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