The Thin Blue Line Is Getting Thinner

by C. Mitchell Shaw

As the war on police continues, the casualties include not only individual cops, but also entire departments. Antifa, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and other far-left, anti-police groups have kept up a never-ending attack on police. With cries of “No Justice, No Peace” and calling cops “the enforcement arm of a racist system,” these groups have raised the stakes by demanding that departments across the nation be abolished or — at the very least — defunded. And they have enjoyed the assistance of liberal mainstream media, which report on police as if they were the enemies of a free society. The result has been that police departments and Sheriff’s offices across the nation are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain officers and deputies.

The thin blue line just keeps getting thinner.

The Anti-police Trend

The problem is not new. It dates back to the 2013 birth of the anti-police BLM movement and has only gotten worse in the ensuing seven years. In October 2015, CNN reported:

Post-Ferguson, the New York Police Department, the country’s biggest police force, says applications are down 18%. LAPD saw a 16% drop in applications since 2013. In Philadelphia, where police have had a decades-long problem of trying to attract new hires, police recruit numbers dropped 47% in 2014 from 2008. Even the small police force in Leesburg, Virginia, says while it hasn’t seen a drop in applications, far fewer qualified candidates are applying, affecting their ability to hire good cops.

And in November of 2017, Leonard Sipes wrote for Law Enforcement Today that officers are portrayed in mainstream media as “thugs, racists, and other despicable terms.” In an update in April of 2018, Sipes reported that while 78 percent of Americans expressed concern about rising crime in America, and “understand that officers are their first line of defense,” police departments and Sheriff’s offices in big cities and small towns were seeing more cops leave the job and fewer recruits coming in to replace them. He summarized the problem, writing, “Police recruitment and retention may be one of the most important problems facing the country.”

Rather than the problem abating, it has only gotten worse — despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans are concerned about crime and don’t want the thin blue line to be not quite so thin. Far-left politicians have colluded with ant-police activists, and police have been increasingly hamstrung — even to the point of being ordered to standby while rioters and looters run amok with impunity. Obviously, this has been very demoralizing to police, as has been intensified anti-police propaganda from the major media. Also, more and more cops have come to realize that their next split-second, life-or-death decision could make them both a YouTube villain and the politicians’ next scapegoat.

So is it the least bit surprising that retirements and resignations have increased? Cops who feel vilified and betrayed have two choices — tough it out or quit. More and more of them are choosing the second option.

That perspective, laid out in an article written by former Austin, Texas, police officer Dustin Hammit, was published in the April 2018 issue of Law Enforcement Today. The article, entitled Breaking Out and bearing the subhead Why I Quit My Job As a Police Officer And I’m Not Looking Back, serves as a type of transcript of an exit interview. And it is revealing. Hammit — who became a police officer in 2014 just as the BLM ant-police narrative was taking off — spends the first paragraph of his article discussing the positives of police work. But then he quickly shifts gears:

But after a while, it does just become just a job. After a while, the rookie stars fade from your eyes. You get burned by suspects. You get burned by the people you are trying to help. You get burned by the criminal justice system. You get burned by your department. You get burned by the politicians in the DA’s office and on the City Council. Wanna know why cops are cynical? It is because they’ve been burned. A lot. By everyone.

So what happens when a really cool gig turns into just another job? Simple, you start focusing on all the negative crap that surrounds the job. And for someone who started policing in 2014, there was plenty to focus on. As a matter of fact, I think most of my cohort would agree that, as far as the attitude surrounding the profession of policing is concerned, 2014 was one hell of a bad year to start. There was Ferguson and Baltimore and we had plenty of our own drama in Austin. All of a sudden, I read the news and got a strong feeling that certain parts of our society felt that I was just a jack-booted thug who evil-laughs while finding ways to violate people’s civil rights. That’s a tough pill to swallow for someone who took on a job to be one of the good guys.

The Trend Continues

As to the betrayal of cops by politicians, examples are legion. One example was when the Virginia State Senate voted in August of this year to eliminate many of the penalties for assaulting police officers. As part of Democrat Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s special session of the General Assembly to deal with “criminal justice reform,” the Virginia Senate considered a litany of “Police Reform” bills. Besides the bill to change the criminal penalties for assaulting a police officer from a felony to a misdemeanor, the Senate also favored bills to defund departments.

As this writer wrote at the time for The New American magazine:

With many in law enforcement already considering their jobs to be increasingly dangerous, this leaves few options. The outcome of such a law would likely lead a reasonable police officer to meet any assault with great force, since the legal protection the officer previously enjoyed would be taken away. Of course, with more and more police officers being charged as criminals for using force to protect themselves and others, many may choose to join the growing trend of turning in their badges and finding other careers.

And that may just the point behind this legislation. Democrats in Virginia and across the country have been listening to the radical rhetoric of extremist groups such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa about defunding and even abolishing police departments. This type of legislation appears to be a soft end-run toward that goal. If police departments simply dissolve because it becomes impossible to hire and retain men and women who refuse to risk life and limb in a system designed to increasingly endanger them, there will be no police departments left for democrats to defund or abolish.

The end result of this bill will be an increase of violence and a lack of police officers. Even those who stay on the job will likely be less willing to engage in dangerous situations. At a time when violence, looting, and riots are destroying cities across this country, police officers are needed more than ever.

This legislation is a clear message to law enforcement in Virginia: While you risk your lives and bodies to serve and protect, you are on your own — lawmakers do not have your back.

Cops Leave the Job

As stated above, the problem of increased resignations and decreased recruiting is impacting departments all across the nation. If your department has been fortunate so far in dodging the problem, that fortune may not last much longer unless something changes. The cause (the war on cops and political betrayal) leads to the effect (resignations and low recruitment). To solve the effect, address the cause. But so far, both the cause and the effect are only getting worse.

Fox News reported in October that “New York Police Department ranks are shrinking to their thinnest in nearly a decade amid plummeting morale linked to anti-cop protests, even as crime in the nation’s largest city is spiking.” That article also listed some dire statistics:

As of Oct. 6, approximately 2,385 officers have filed for retirement in 2020, a spokesperson for the NYPD confirmed to Fox News on Friday. During the same time last year, the department saw just under 1,300 members retire.

And NYPD Chief of Personnel Martin Morales told Newsday, “From January to May, we averaged about 200 retirements a month.” Morales added that those numbers have risen sharply in recent months as bail reform, police reform, anti-police sentiment, and efforts to defund police — all of which are heralded by BLM, Antifa, and other anti-police activists — have taken a toll on police officers and departments. He said that from June through September, “we have averaged nearly 400, so we have doubled. Last year, I had only one month that was above 200.”

Retirements and resignations are up nationwide. A report by Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) shows that “more officers are leaving their departments — and, in many cases, leaving the policing profession — well before they reach retirement age.” The PERF report also shows that exit interviews show that the second most popular answer to the question “Why are you resigning?” is “pursuing a career outside of law enforcement,” indicating that many sworn officers are leaving the profession entirely.

Slashed Budgets and Vilification: Low Recruitment Means Fewer Cops

It would be bad enough if the many seasoned officers who are leaving their jobs and departments had to be replaced en masse with new recruits. But the situation is worse than that, because the recruitment numbers — way off since 2013 and corresponding with the new wave of anti-police sentiment — is getting worse instead of better. As already mentioned, recruiting has been off for years, but now — with police under constant attack in the mainstream media and department budgets slashed as part of the #DefundPolice movement — filling those open slots is harder than ever.

As Charles Fain Lehman wrote in February for City Journal:

Across the United States, from cities to rural counties, police departments are confronting a recruitment crisis. “Going back to 2010, we had about 4,700 online applications. That dropped down to about 1,900 last year,” said Steve Anderson, chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, in a Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) report last year. Seattle’s police department reported a 40 percent to 50 percent drop in applications, while Jefferson County, Colorado’s applications plummeted 70 percent. In total, 86 percent of police chiefs nationwide reported a shortage of sworn officers, with nearly half stating that the shortage had worsened over the past five years.

Charleston, South Carolina, is a prime example. Lieutenant Autumn Davis, recruiting and retention officer for the Charleston Police Department, was quoted in an article published online in late October by MSN News as saying, “We used to start with such a large pool of people but now it’s becoming harder and harder for people to show up for the (police officer) test.” Davis said the department currently needs to fill about 16 spots on its force. And in the upcoming months a few officers will be retiring, which will make the number of unfilled spots go up.

Davis said she believes the shortage is nationwide and that the strained relationship between police and the community in some places across the country could be partly to blame for the difficulty in recruiting new officers.

Charleston is not an anomaly: USA Today reported in late July that the PERF report referenced above shows that “nearly half of 258 agencies surveyed this month are reporting that funding has already been slashed or is expected to be reduced.” Since that PERF report shows that much of the funding is being pulled from equipment, hiring, and training accounts, it would naturally follow that departments would find it hard to fill open spots.

As politicians acquiesce to demands from radical leftists to cut police department budgets and mainstream media continue to vilify all cops as racist thugs hell-bent on enforcing “systemic racism,” crime continues to rise in cities and towns all across America. Again, New York serves as an example. The city — which had seen a decades-long decrease in crime due to proactive policing by a well-manned force — has seen an uptick in crime (especially violent crime) since New York municipal officials slashed $1 billion from an operating budget of about $6 billion. That cut meant the cancellation of a 1,200-person police recruiting class and also cut deeply into overtime budgets. Given less policing, it is little wonder to see crime on the rise again. New York may be in for a rerun of the “Bad Old Days.”

The Left Celebrates

Sadly, not everyone can see (or admit it if they do see) that as policing goes down, crime goes up. In 2015, as even mainstream media could no longer ignore the recruiting and retention problem, there were numerous reports on the topic. These reports apparently came to the attention of anti-cop activist Michael Storm at copblock.org. In September 2015, Storm wrote an article under the clueless headline, “Police Recruiting is Down, Hope for a Free Society is Up.” The subhead stated, “The dream is dead, now maybe another innocent, until proven guilty, citizen wont be.”

In his article, Storm gleefully exclaimed, “The recent ‘wave of anti-cop sentiment’ has many PD’s clamoring to find new recruits while police recruiting is down, and it has people like myself hopeful for a future free of authoritarian policing for profit.” He describes a police recruit as “the next jack-booted costumed gang member to terrorize their fellow citizens,” and current officers as “fat rights violators in blue sit[ting] around eating donuts in their cruisers waiting to pull over citizens for non-crimes.” He blames the war on cops — of which he is an operative — on proactive policing. One is left to wonder if Storm’s sentiments would shift — if only momentarily — if he were to find himself in a situation where police officers had to risk their lives and limbs to save him from the world he hopes to create.

Given the current situation, unless police departments and Sheriff’s offices can find a way to combat the growing anti-police sentiment, Storm and his kind may succeed — by defunding and demoralizing cops — in creating that world: a world without police to stand in the gap and defend their communities from criminals who mean to part their neighbors from their lives, their liberty, and their property.

What Can Be Done?

It seems clear that what is needed is an increased awareness of the value of cops. And cops need to be seen as neighbors, friends, fellow parishioners, and active members of the community. Social media presence should focus on positive stories of policing. Community policing has tremendous value, but if it is not seen, it does not count; He who tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooted. That may not be in the Bible, but it is true.

Departments should have a designated social-media person (or persons) who routinely post pictures and articles of officers going above and beyond. We all know the stories of cops who pay for groceries for people, or help them get their kids home from school when a car breaks down. But our fellow citizens may not know those stories, or if they do, they get drowned out in the #ACAB narrative.

By going the extra distance to help the people in our communities see cops as people, your department can shift the narrative. People who want to be heroes will again be drawn to become cops. Citizens will demand more funding for training, equipment, and hiring new recruits. Retention and recruitment will be up and America will have the cops she needs.

It’s time to take the high ground in the War on Cops. Our communities depend on it.