There’s two bulls standing on top of a mountain. The younger one says to the older one: “Hey pop, let’s say we run down there and get one of them cows”. The older one says: “No son. Let’s walk down and get ’em all”.
LAPD Officer Bob Hodges (Played by Robert Duvall) to his new partner Danny McGavin (Played by Sean Penn)
Colors 1988
I was looking at the news recently, and it’s not good. My old hometown, New Orleans, is quickly becoming the murder capital of the country. Murder, rape and robbery are surging in our major cities (New York, LA), and some of the politicians just don’t seem to want to handle the issue. Back to my former hometown, the mayor, LaToya Cantrell, known as LaToya Da Destroya, knows how to stop this crime. A peace pole! No, I’m not joking.
I was looking at an article Sunday, and it caught my eye. I posted in the past on Where Have all The Cops Gone, on how we’re losing experienced police to retirement. Many of them are leaving money on the table, departing before getting a full amount of the Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP), or other benefits, put in decades ago to keep them on the force. Major cities are losing their young, assertive officers, the men and women who would have been the experienced veterans in 15-20 years. And herein lies the issue.
I’ve been a cop for not quite 25 years. As a rookie, I knew the gray hair meant, if not wisdom, experience. These old dudes on the street had made it through 20-25-30 plus years and knew how to handle multiple circumstances. How to calm a crowd down, how to talk someone to surrendering as opposed to getting multiple cops and civilians into a fight. The academy and field training can only teach so much. The hard work of life on the streets is where your real education comes in.
That is why this article on the loss of officers in the New York Police Department is so disturbing.
NEW YORK, NY – Nearly 1,600 cops have retired or resigned from the NYPD in the first 5 months of 2022. That represents an increase of 38% over 2021 and 46% more the 2020 numbers…
1,596 officers are no longer in their roles with the NYPD, so far in 2022. Based on the monthly average of 319.2, the NYPD is poised to lose just over 11% of their department’s force this year, or 3,830 officers.
That number is staggering when you consider that would outdistance the previous two years combined by more than 1,500.
In 2019, there were 36,900 officers employed by the NYPD.
Today, there are 34,687.
So, what is driving this mass exodus?
The New York Post discussed the opinion of one officer who left the NYPD to work at a different Long Island department.
“Anti-cop hostility, bail reform, and rising crime have fed into frustration among the NYPD rank and file,” the officer said of his decision to leave after 6 1/2 years with NYPD.
The Post spoke with a cop whose beat is in Queens who was identified only as Joe.
“The city is out of control, especially since bail reform,” he said of his patrol job, which he claims has continued to worsen over time.
The mindset of Joe and others is now “get out while you still can…”
This is a critical issue is New York, like countless other large departments (Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston). Young officers, enjoying their job and believing they have a future, gain experience and training. They develop into the men and women you want on the street handing one issue after another. As one veteran officer told me ages ago, “Yea Thiac, we’re the old dudes on the department. We’re not the trimmest, the bad guys will outrun many times. However, we know how to capture the bad guy tomorrow without getting into a shootout. And the thing we don’t give the city? Lawsuits!”
In my time as a sergeant, I would occasionally serve on the Special Reaction Group. These are officers and supervisors (Mainly patrol, but often investigative or admin) trained in crowd control. And normally my squad (6-10 officers, depending on the event) would have all but one or two young officers. I would approach the other officer with gray hair and ask him to help me as an assistant squad leader. Basically, keep your experienced eyes on the rookies, make sure they don’t get in over their heads, etc. And the older officers, to a man, had no issue with it. Other “old dudes” helped them when they were just starting out.
But back to the famous quote from Colors by Robert Duvall. Without good, younger officers on the street today, there will not be older, experienced officers tomorrow to train a new group of capable cops in the future. And with multiple large cities making law enforcement a less attractive field, this will only make it worse.
Solutions? Here are some. First, get the politicians away from the anti-cop radicals like BLM and Antifa. When you see the mayor of the city praising terrorist groups like this, every cop in the area will decide this city will not back me up, so I’m not putting myself out.
Second, stop throwing cops under the bus every time they use force. Investigate, yes, but when a 13-year-old with a gun is shot after refusing to drop the gun, the issue is not the cops chasing him. The issue is his parents should have insured their son was at home instead of shooting a pistol in the middle of the city. The “solution” is not a new foot chase policy basically ending foot chases.
Three, stop threatening to strip cops of qualified immunity. These men and women have families to provide for, homes to pay for, futures to plan for. Having politicians openly threaten to take all that away from law enforcement officers (But keeping it for themselves) will, again, ensure the cops just answer calls for service and nothing else.
Finally, start charging people for crime again. When you have people walking into drugstore in San Francisco, taking just under one-thousand dollars of merchandise, and walking out, knowing they will not be prosecuted, then there is no deterrence. Also with open use of narcotics and prostitution. Why even write a report? It will simply be put into a computer server and be sued for stats.
This is not the first-time law enforcement has been in crisis, see the 1970s in our major cities. The difference is the political class has not attacked the police forces this openly before now. Until that changes, be ready for a rough ride.
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers
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When politicians promote lawlessness, what can a cop do? Get out while you still can. When DAs quit prosecuting crimes, what do you do? Same answer.
It’s not the cops’ fault that crimes are being left unpunished. The value of the cop has been taken from him. Why would you stay?
Not that cops should ever be at the rudder directing the ship, but he needs the proper guidance, as in enforcing laws, by punishing criminals, not slapping them on the wrist and then releasing them from their temporary stay in jail.
We have politicians with terrible values and political ideas running cops away. I’d run away, too, if I had to put up with that. I know it looks bad when cops stand around doing nothing, but with the lack of leadership and judicial enforcement, and political bunch trying to demonize them, it’s a wonder that there are any cops left.
That shooting in Akron. I’ve said this countless times, on this shooting, and others. Wait, let all the facts come out, and then we assess the actions the officers took. It is too easy to Monday morning quarterback, and when you have another Democratic AG with cops in his crosshairs, you can’t be too trusting. The major cities will screw over cops in a heartbeat.
This is not just happening with LEO’s. It’s happening everywhere. I spent my entire career in the petro-chemical construction industry, I retired 5 years ago. The folks who came up under me and are 15-20 years younger, tell me that they are looking for the exits. Woke BS has infiltrated everywhere and they’re disgusted.
I was going to say much the same thing.
People that like to grow and get better know that they need the right culture to grow and get better but they know that de-constructed work (or woke) cultures lead to people just… leaving and going in search for someplace that meets their needs.
Another issue is the zero defect mentality. The impression (justified or not) one slip up, and you’re gone.
As I’ve told many rookie officers, “One way to not make mistakes. Don’t do anything.” And that’s a good rule in any career field.
Mike, for some reason the spamfilter popped you. Apologies for not noticing sooner. 🙁
The difference is a cop can start in a major city, spend a few years, take his peace officer’s license, and go work for Mayberry PD, maybe not as much money, but less stress, don’t have the command staff ready to destroy you for one mistake, the “community leaders” working to you fired if you do take any type of action. Dallas lost so many rookie officers to this they started putting in a payback requirement. You quite after one year, you must reimburse the city some many thousands of dollars for your academy training. Can’t blame Dallas, but that is not solving the problem. Earn you people’s trust, and you will have no issue with departures, etc.