NY Times: Say, Have Y’all Noticed That A Lot Of Police Officers Have Left The Job?

A rather good, almost honest article from the NY Times on cops leaving their jobs over the last year, with the defund the police movement and the blame from politicians heavily minimized

Why Police Have Been Quitting in Droves in the Last Year

As protests surged across the country last year over the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, Officer Lindsay C. Rose in Asheville, N.C., found her world capsized.

Various friends and relatives had stopped speaking to her because she was a cop. During a protest in June around Police Headquarters, a demonstrator lobbed an explosive charge that set her pants on fire and scorched her legs.

She said she was spit on. She was belittled. Members of the city’s gay community, an inclusive clan that had welcomed her in when she first settled in Asheville, stood near her at one event and chanted, “All gay cops are traitors,” she said.

By September, still deeply demoralized despite taking several months off to recuperate, Officer Rose decided that she was done. She quit the Police Department and posted a sometimes bitter, sometimes nostalgic essay online that attracted thousands of readers throughout the city and beyond.

“I’m walking away to exhale and inhale, I’m leaving because I don’t have any more left in me right now,” she wrote. “I’m drowning in this politically charged atmosphere of hate and destruction.”

Where was the hate coming from? That’s somewhat glossed over, as the Times certainly wants to take a soft approach and not make their leftist, cop hating readership mad

Officer Rose was hardly alone. Thousands of police officers nationwide have headed for the exits in the past year.

A survey of almost 200 police departments indicated that retirements were up 45 percent and resignations rose by 18 percent in the year from April 2020 to April 2021 when compared with the previous 12 months, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington policy institute.

New York City saw 2,600 officers retire in 2020 compared with 1,509 the year before. Resignations in Seattle increased to 123 from 34 and retirements to 96 from 43. Minneapolis, which had 912 uniformed officers in May 2019, is now down to 699. At the same time, many cities are contending with a rise in shootings and homicides.

And then these same cities saw their crime skyrocket, including murder and attempted murder. Surprise!

The fact that the protests were directed at them pushed many officers to quit, he said. “They said that we have become the bad guys, and we did not get into this to become the bad guys.”

A sense that the city (of Asheville) itself did not back its police was a key reason for the departures, according to officers themselves as well as police and city officials. Officers felt that they should have been praised rather than pilloried after struggling to contain chaotic protests.

And that’s pretty much the only mention. Defund the police? One quick mention later. The police in Asheville, who were initially praised after dealing with the unhinged, violent protests, were then pilloried by the police chief and mayor. We saw the video: the police were being attacked, violence was going on, and the high mucky-mucks expected the officers to essentially say “pretty please, stop” to these nutjobs.

To make do, the A.P.D. has trimmed its services even as shootings and other violent crimes escalated, a trend that has been seen across the country and which many experts have connected to disruption from the pandemic. The police received about 650 calls for “shots fired” last year, Chief Zack said, and there were 10 homicides, compared with seven the year before. Aggravated assaults were also up.

The department shuttered a downtown satellite office, stopped bicycle patrols and is making fewer traffic stops. It published a list of 10 incidents to which it would no longer dispatch officers, including some vehicle thefts, and urged citizens to file simple complaints online rather than calling.

All but one of the seven officers who investigated domestic violence and sexual assault left, so the department is trying to get three officers up to speed on the skills needed.

Asheville isn’t Portland or Chicago: it’s a very nice, middle of nowhere city in the NC mountains that was once very safe, a wonderful weekend destination for so many. Now? Neighborhood Scout ranks it a 1, which is the worst number a city can get. That’s worse than Chicago. Violent crime is double the NC and US rates, and property crime is almost 3 times the NC and US rates. All those people who caused problems and want to slam the cops, defund them, abuse them in Asheville? They should be required to stay, so they can deal with the fallout of their policies.

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16 Responses to “NY Times: Say, Have Y’all Noticed That A Lot Of Police Officers Have Left The Job?”

  1. Professor Hale says:

    “All gay cops are traitors,”

    And she never considered giving up hanging around with leftist activists.

    • Dana says:

      Perhaps she considered the “the city’s gay community, an inclusive clan that had welcomed her in when she first settled in Asheville,” to be her friends, regardless of their politics.

      The New York Times just published a column, Should I Hang Out With Someone Whose Political Views I Hate?

      At least so far, it hasn’t been conservatives ditching their liberal friends, but the other way around.

      • Professor Hale says:

        I am seeing a more common theme of people cutting “toxic” people from their lives. Many of them just happen to be democrats but I would include talk radio and all political media, regardless of which bias they hold (Marxist or normal people).

  2. Hairy says:

    Less than 4% of police work hours is spent on “violent” crime
    Over 50% is spent on either non criminal calls or traffic
    Perhaps ? The police should spend more time on what Teach dees on TV and less on the least important???
    New York Times
    June 19 2020
    Asher

    • Dana says:

      Mayor Rudolph Giuliani cleaned up New York City by using the ‘broken windows’ policing philosophy: arrest and prosecute for the lower level crimes, to try to keep the beginner bad guys from becoming hardened criminals, and it worked. The homicide rate is getting worse now under the idiotic Bill de Blasio, but New York City still sees fewer murders than Philadelphia, which is only a sixth NYC’s size.

      Maybe a jail term for petty theft will scare straight the young kid who tries it, and maybe it won’t, but at least he isn’t out committing more crimes when he’s behind bars at Rikers Island.

      Our problem isn’t mass incarceration; our problem is that not enough people are incarcerated.

    • Kye says:

      “Less than 4% of police work hours is spent on “violent” crime”

      That’s a total fuking lie and both you and the NYT know it. You commies pluck numbers out of thin air to support your vulgar narrative. Police work on violent crime involves hundreds of thousands of hours of investigation, evidence gathering and case management. It’s not just grabbing the first person with a smoking gun in the overwhelming number of crimes.

      BTW, if a person steals your car would you consider that a violent crime? Yet you were violated. Violent and violated have the same Latin root. Hairy, you know as much about criminal science as you do about climate science and you should leave both to those who understand the actual problems.

    • gitarcarver says:

      Hairy’s response is typical of the lack of critical thinking and hatred from the left.

      Hairy would have people believe that crimes such as theft are not important. (Unless, of course his pizza rolls were stolen.) Hairy would have us think that cops dealing with making the roads safer and dealing with accidents is not worthy of their attention. Hairy would have us think that fraud is not important, (unless it is his mother who is being defrauded out of money for his pizza rolls.)

      The list goes on and on but it is clear that Hairy hates the police so much and doesn’t understand what they do because he hates facts, logic and information.

      After all, all the left has is hate.

      • Hairy says:

        GC would have us believe that the limited amount of time 4% that American police does not need to be increased
        We have the technology to enforce traffic laws with minimal police time
        Maybe some on the right actually LIKE the idea of increasing violent crime, they sure font seem to want to change the amount of time police spend trying to reduce it!!

        • gitarcarver says:

          Hairy wrote:

          GC would have us believe that the limited amount of time 4% that American police does not need to be increased

          It is hysterical that Hairy is arguing against his own original position. What he originally wrote was: Less than 4% of police work hours is spent on “violent” crime

          What statistically challenged Hairy failed to realize crimes such a theft, shoplifting, drunk driving offenses, theft, larceny, evading the police, vandalism, criminal mischief, interference with child custody, possession of a controlled substance and other drug crimes burglary, cyber crime, racketeering, forgery, criminal property damage, etc.

          It is clear that Hairy once again does not know what he is talking about.

          He further makes the absurd assertion that police should focus more time on “violent crimes,” as if the police have any control over what crimes come over the radio to investigate. Such an assertion defies logic, but that is what we have come to expect from Hairy.

          It is interesting to note that the police in New York did the work and arrested rioters who damaged property and stole goods from stores. While Hairy was scarfing down some pizza rolls and demanding his mother make more and bring them to the basement, police were trying to protect life and property and made arrests only to see those cases dismissed by prosecutors.

          If Hairy actually got out of his house, one has to wonder how he would feel to be robbed (non-violent crime,) had his car vandalized, or a business he owned destroyed. Because Hairy hates law abiding citizens, we would hope that he would be consistent and say “no problem law breakers! Just destroy and take everything I own!” But because Hairy consistently hates any type of moral and ethical consistency in his life (often demanding others do what he will not) we suspect that he would call the police and the FBI if his pizza rolls were stolen on the way back from the grocery store.

          We have the technology to enforce traffic laws with minimal police time

          I am presuming that Hairy is talking about traffic cameras which are notoriously unreliable and companies have been caught manipulating settings on the cameras in order to increase revenues for private companies. However, who wants cameras like that in residential neighborhoods filming stop signs? Or a soccer mom going 2 miles over the speed limit?

          We have no idea how Hairy wants to deal with uninsured drivers unless the drivers are actually stopped by the police, but that is just another case of fantasy land from the basement.

          Maybe some on the right actually LIKE the idea of increasing violent crime, they sure font seem to want to change the amount of time police spend trying to reduce it!!

          This is, of course, projection from Hairy. The right has always been on the side of law and order while the left has always initiated policies in blue cities that increase crime.

          Hairy hates the cops and hates law abiding citizens.

          After all, all the left has is hate.

          We have the technology to enforce traffic laws with minimal police time

          We assume that Hairy is talking about things

          • gitarcarver says:

            RE Hairy’s statement that we have the technology to enforce traffic laws with minimal police time

            A few minutes ago, I got a call from a friend who got a notice from Florida Code Enforcement. It was a bill for going on a toll road. A few months ago he had made a trip north, but had gotten the toll bill and paid it. He wondered what the notice was for.

            The notice was for a toll bill on a road in Miami. (He hasn’t been to Miami in at least 10 years.) The bill had an image of a car with “his” license plate on it. His car is a red Saturn coupe. The car in the image was a dark Mazda mini-van.

            Hairy thinks the technology is there because he hates the idea of actual cops. (It should be noted that many traffic stops result in felons with warrants being arrested.)

            Hairy hate cops doing their job because all the left has is hate.

  3. JG says:

    I see the increase in crime in Blue Cities. I read about the crime in my home state of California from the laws they pass that stop police arresting shoplifting if under $1k and this is killing small business who is leaving large cities. California has elected Soros DAs in many large cities and nobody is going to jail for crime. This with law changes are causing police to leave.

    I learned California state history in elementary school in the 60s. San Francisco after the gold rush had corrupt police, judges, and crime mob. It got so bad that finally ordinary people became vigillanties and cleaned out the rot. I expect this will happen throughout the nation when it gets to bad. This is why the politicians want us disarmed.

    • Professor Hale says:

      That is a common prediction about future America. I personally suspect that the country is pretty well divided and that the people most at risk of crime losses are also living in those places that are OK with the policies that give them such things. And people who are not OK with high crime are living in places where there is very little of it. So, my take is that it is very unlikely any sort of large scale vigilantism will break out.

  4. Professor Hale says:

    From what I am hearing, in the Democratic party run cities, police spend over half their time doing paperwork and responding to complaints about police behavior. Not much time left in their day for “police work”. Under those rules, police forces need to triple in size to effectively have the same footprint on the ground or “knee on the neck” of the community.

    • Hairy says:

      Please tell us who told you that? I am surprised that you believed it
      You can and should use google to see how police spend their time

  5. bob says:

    are they really that stupid.

  6. est1950 says:

    If I were a policeman still stupid enough to be performing police duties on the street of any democrat run city, I would take about 30-40 minutes to respond to a call in which ANYONE OF COLOR was involved.

    In fact I would call in and say my car broke down, I had a flat tire. There was an earthquake, a flood, my Tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. Anything.

    BLM has HURT the black communities most of whom are people just trying to get along. Just like most Hispanic and white and Asians are just trying to get along. Muslims, Jews and Christians are all just trying to get by and do not give anyone any trouble.

    BLM is a terrorist organization, every bit as terroristic as AGW. Both should be put on a watch list. But instead we are mainstreaming BLM and AGW in a world gone mad….and the blow back is starting to come in tidal waves.

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