Rampant crime and far-left Democrat policies that handcuff law enforcement have led to a mass exodus of New York’s finest who are fleeing Gotham’s police force in droves as the city sinks into lawlessness now that the chickens of the George Floyd “summer of love” have come home to roost.
“Cops are being squeezed from every direction. They are working inhumane amounts of forced overtime. The brass is pushing for more enforcement, while the police-oversight complex is pushing to ruin more cops’ careers,” NYC Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said.
“Many cops can’t afford to keep taking that risk because the pay is still too low,” added Hendry whose union represents over 21,000 officers. “The NYPD will not be able to recruit its way out of this staffing emergency. It needs to make the job livable for the cops it already has.”
According to a New York Post report, “Through June 30, 648 officers quit before retiring this year — a 22% spike from 2021, when 530 left, and an 87% rise from 2020, when 347 quit, NYPD pension data show.”
A combination of “voluntary quits” and recruiting problems will leave the NYPD “at least 1,200 short,” according to the police union.
The latest figures mark an ongoing pattern as city cops beat a path to a more friendly beat, the outlet also reported on the city’s law enforcement retention problems earlier this year.
(Video: YouTube/Fox5 New York)
“At the current rate, nearly 1,300 cops are projected to resign this year before qualifying for retirement — on pace to match last year’s record 1,297 early exits,” the Post reported, adding “the exodus began after Minnesota cop Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd on May 25, 2020, sparking nationwide protests and calls to defund the police. Anti-cop hostility, bail reform, and rising crime have fed into frustration among the NYPD rank and file.”
The George Floyd riots hit the Big Apple particularly hard with then-Mayor Bill de Blasio dumping on cops while celebrating Black Lives Matter militants and all but handing the key to the city over to criminals who have become increasingly emboldened as beleaguered residents follow police out of the door for safer locales.
From Fifth Avenue to Fulton Street to Richmond Terrace, NYC has a message for the world: #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/wtkzCHpURm
— NYC Mayor’s Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) July 9, 2020
Insiders told the New York Post that the NYPD exodus has been spurred by the City Council and police watchdogs’ “continued piling on ” with the City Council set to pass a packing of bills that will make the job of policing even more onerous by requiring cops to file “millions of reports on even the most minor encounters with New Yorkers” and mandate the police “speedily turn over officers’ body-camera recordings to state investigators, and that the department disclose more information about traffic stops and internal operations.”
Additionally, a bill that’s being promoted by left-wing Public Advocate Jumaane Williams “would require officers to file a report on all low-level ‘police-civilian investigative encounters.’ These are instances where the person the police officer is engaging is not considered a suspect or being stopped, questioned and frisked.”
The outlet cited a 26-year-old Bronx police officer who’s been on the job for five years saying that “crazy” laws on bail reform and Williams’ “nonsensical” meddling are a contributor to the “huge disconnect” that has him mulling a move.
“They want to bury officers under unnecessary paperwork that will create a further rift between the community and the police,” the officer identified as “John” told the outlet, saying that the “public might not want to cooperate as freely, in say, a missing child call, because now it has to be documented.”
He told the outlet that the “an endless onslaught” of anti-police measures from city officials and people who live “in a bubble” is like “death by a thousand papercuts.”
In another sign of the tumult at One Police Plaza, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell abruptly and unexpectedly resigned in June after just a year and a half as the historic first black woman to head up the force, the largest in the nation. She was appointed last year by incoming Mayor Eric Adams, himself a former police officer.
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