Fearful and dejected US police hand in badges

Demoralised police officers are leaving their departments in large numbers as US cities contend with a rise in shootings and murders.

New York City police officers stand guard across from One World Trade Centre in lower Manhattan during commemoration ceremonies for the September 11 terror attacks. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

Demoralised police officers are leaving their departments in large numbers as US cities contend with a rise in shootings and murders.

Retirements and resignations have risen sharply and many police chiefs say it has become harder to attract new recruits, according to a survey of 194 departments conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum.

“Officers are depressed over the negative national narrative about the police,” the head of one police department told the think-tank. “They also have pandemic fatigue.”

Another reported “significant concern by my officers over the future of policing. Their significant others are pressuring them to leave the profession. All of my resignations were leaving the profession completely. Also there is not a hiring pool to replace these officers. The candidates are non-existent or very sub-par.”

Overall, the retirement rate was up by 45 per cent against the previous year, according to the survey. Resignations, per 100 officers, rose by 18 per cent.

The survey follows reports of large numbers of officers stepping away from the job in major cities. New York lost 2600 officers last year, nearly 1100 more than the year before.

Seattle reported a record number of retirements and resignations leaving it with a force of 1080 deployable officers.

At a smaller department in Asheville, North Carolina, which lost a third of its officers, Lindsay Rose wrote a blog post last autumn explaining her reasons for leaving the police.

“I’m drowning in this politically charged atmosphere,” she wrote. “I’ve been spit on, belittled, called things never to repeat, attacked, assaulted.”

Ms Rose, who is gay, said that she had been “called a traitor from a community that I thought was inclusive”.

She said she was “supposed to make split-second decisions for the betterment of all and the public can destroy it after a Snapchat clip of a piece of the story?! What the actual hell?”

The blog post was widely read and republished by a local television station though it has since been taken down.

Ms Rose, who worked for a removals firm run by a fellow officer who had also stepped down, later told reporters that she had been persuaded to rejoin as a community liaison officer.

The Times