Major cities saw 24% increase in police quitting the force last year

WASHINGTON (SBG) — Police officers in major cities left the force in droves last year amid heightened public scrutiny of law enforcement and calls to defund the police.

According to a study by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF), the number of officers who quit their jobs increased by 24% at the nation's largest police agencies. Overall, voluntary departures increased 18% and separations and voluntary retirements spiked 14%.

Researchers tracked the exodus from June 2020, after the racial justice protests in response to the police killing of George Floyd through April 2021, and compared it to the same period the year earlier.

"The issue of people leaving the profession has to do with morale," explained LELDF president Jason Johnson. "They feel that it's no longer a profession they're willing to risk their lives and limb for. They don't feel their work is for a good reason. They don't feel appreciated by the public. So, they just find other things to do."

The study looked at police attrition rates at 10 of the largest agencies in the country: Austin, Texas, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles County, Miami-Dade, Fla., Pittsburgh, San Francisco, San Jose, Calif., and Las Vegas. Each department had over 1,000 sworn officers. Complete data were not available for some larger police departments including New York, Baltimore, Seattle and Portland, Ore., which also saw significant exits last year.

Austin and Los Angeles both saw more than a 60% increase in the number of officers quitting the force. Voluntary retirements hit 131% in Cleveland and 70% in Pittsburgh. In San Jose, 1 in 9 officers left the police department. One in 12 officers left the Las Vegas police force.

At the same time, those cities experienced higher rates of violent crime, leading many in law enforcement to conclude that the factors are related.

D.C. saw 17% more officers quitting last year compared to the year before. This summer, the force was down 200 officers and the city has seen a sharp spike in violent crime since 2019. The city also voted in 2020 to cut $15 million from the police budget. Earlier this year, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser asked the city council for $11 million to hire more police. The city council unanimously rejected the proposal.

City officials in Austin slashed the police budget by $150 million in the summer of 2020, a 33% cut. Over the next year, the 1,800-person police force lost 9% of its officers to retirement or resignations. Meanwhile, homicides in the city rose 56%. This summer, the Austin city council reversed the budget cuts to passrecord funding for the police department to hire more officers.

New York, Minneapolis and Los Angeles were also among the cities that imposed steep budget cuts in 2020 but re-funded the police after a dramatic rise in violent crime. Each of those cities saw homicides increase by more than 50% compared to 2019. The national homicide rate spiked 30% last year, marking the single largest annual increase on record.

Law enforcement professionals have voiced support for the trend to rehire officers and use emergency pandemic funding to improve public safety. But they warn the attrition problem won't be solved as easily or quickly as some may hope. Major cities are also dealing with lower rates of recruitment, fewer cadets entering the academies and fewer qualified candidates applying to the force.

"Even if all the elected leaders and community leaders suddenly agree that defunding and demoralizing the police was a bad move and we want to go back in the other direction, it's still going to be very hard to reverse course. And it would take some time," Johnson said.

It takes about one year for an applicant to be hired, complete training and be prepared to function as a sworn police officer. Even with sign-on bonuses and other incentives, it could take several years to fill the vacant positions, Johnson said, and that's only if the rate of attrition slows.

"I hate to say this," he said, "but you've got to expect that it's probably going to get worse before it gets better."