John Pfaff: Well, well, well. WELL. That whole “protests made cops feel bad so they all quit” narrative? Looks like it was mostly myth. Excited to read this paper by Ben Grunwald, who compiled a huge dataset on post-2020 police employment. Agg decline was 1%… and bigger local declines not tied to protests.

Well, well, well. WELL. That whole “protests made cops feel bad so they all quit” narrative? Looks like it was mostly myth. Excited to read this paper by Ben Grunwald, who compiled a huge dataset on post-2020 police employment. Agg decline was 1%… and bigger local declines not tied to protests.

Paper is here. Another great reminder that police departments are aggressively political institutions, and large departments have big PR departments, and the unions fight even tougher. Their claims must be subjected to the same scrutiny as any other politician’s.

A Large-Scale Study of the Police Retention Crisispapers.ssrn.com Beginning in 2020, law enforcement experts widely claimed that a surge in police separations triggered a national retention crisis and that political activism a

And to those saying “I thought it was quiet quitting,” yes, there are claims of a wildcat strike too, but plenty of claims of actual quitting as well. For example:

Why Police Have Been Quitting in Droves in the Last Year (Published 2021)www.nytimes.com Asheville, N.C., has been among the hardest hit by police departures in the wake of last year’s George Floyd protests. About a third of the force quit or retired.

And, I'd add, bc this is another policy hill I'm happy to die on, already read the fine wonky print, bc the truth usually hides deep in the weeds. Most stories about police resignations actually referred--in the article, not the headline--to RETIREMENTS. And when you read police contracts, well...

A cop's annual pension payout is a function of their total income--not base wages, but wages PLUS OVERTIME--of their final few years. The protests produced MASSIVE OT. Cops were never going to see years like that again. If you want to retire to max out your pension, 2021 was a primo year.

Retirement incentives buried in the depths of collective bargaining agreements with the police unions. To the extent officers quit, I bet it was far more this. (It's also why I'm pro-OT for police: better than hiring new guys who expand union #s, and gives the older guys a reason to quit sooner.)

Didn’t someone do some data gathering on the retirement question? I now want to know if all these bonus incentives “worked”.

That is a brilliant, brilliant point. If I were a betting man I'd wager than pension was the primary driver of the observed spikes in 2021 resignations (5% in some departments, according to the paper).

See I thought it was, "dying from the coronavirus," but even that needs tempering!

The SF Union is hugely garbage poisoning PR. Ex: Need to let officers review the footage BEFORE writing their first impression facts statement but nah, can’t let witnesses or subject do the same. Lying is so endemic to our officers we need to let these ‘trained’ observers get their stories straight.

This was specifically in relation to police involved shootings. They wanted to side-step officers claiming whatever for their actions to stop getting caught chronically lying about or embellishing how events unfolded. Everyone needs to write what they recall before going to tapes. No pre-oops cover

I think what’s happening is that protests made cops butthurt and so they are now engaged in a nationwide work slowdown to make crime rise but it’s not working. The only thing it’s doing is causing the traffic accident death rate to skyrocket since the speed limit is not enforced.

i really want a national "speed limit enforcement" service, entirely separate from cops, purely to stop people and ticket them. could mostly be camera enforcement. we should enforce these laws but i see no good reason to connect speeding with any other kind of crime.

In the state of Victoria they use private contractors to run mobile speed camera traps

honestly that seems just fine i want speed enforcement to be remote if possible and also basically universal; like, if you speed you should be *sure* you’ll get a ticket and have an easy appeals process so that if you were bringing somebody to the hospital or whatever you can get an exemption

I don’t think the courts would allow a national speed limit enforcement system given that they won’t allow a national speed limit. But I do like the idea of moving enforcement to the highway equivalent of parking enforcement. Not cops but civil servants—who can call the cops if they are in danger.

Just for the record, national speed limits are fine, and we had one when I was a kid. Congress tied it to highway funds (so “voluntary,” since you can decline the funds, but Feds fund ~50% of state hwy budgets, so … not really). The variation now was Clinton-era (IIRC) deregulation.

I’m pretty sure I remember Colorado going to court to get out of Carter’s 55MPH speed limit tied to highway funding (back when we were a red state), and it got rolled into deregulation because the writing was on the wall.

Colorado had a bit of leverage after the US Navy attempted to destroy central Denver with a truckload of armed torpedoes crashing in the Mouse Trap (the interchange of I-70, I-25, 5 surface streets, railroads, and two rivers). And our US Senator was running for president.

i meant more that the concept should be national, i don’t care if each county or whatever wants to stand up their own version basically just “make this remote to the extent possible, and take it away from cops”

pretty much that's what we have in the UK. Speed cameras and police, but lots less emphasis on police. And if you speed more than 3 or 4 times you lose your licence, even if you pay the £100 max fine each time.

I always thought it was more “quiet quitting” i.e. they just went to the break room instead of doing their jobs.

The conservative myth was that nobody wanted to be a cop anymore. The reality (as you point out) was that they kept their high-paying jobs but just didn't do them.

They also clarified loudly that those jobs don’t require them to actually help you ever

This is how I’ve heard it too

During a pandemic that killed more in rural areas, police, not known for taking COVID seriously, saw a reduction in their work force primarily in rural areas. I'm stumped as to how that could happen.

Who could have anticipated that a class of people who are notorious for being pussies would, in fact, puss out on actually following through on a threat.

So the ones who stayed just stopped doing their jobs.

So they fudged the truth? LEO folks doing that? Anyway, re: retention of officers, shouldn't there be a free market solution to the losses?

A cop threatened to quit if the state prevented high-speed chases. Because car go fast

The main narrative I heard was that they reduced contacts and made fewer traffic stops, not that they quit.

Whenever someone tries to sell you a narrative, always demand to see the numbers. And then look at them closely, and ask for follow-up questions, YOY numbers, etc. Those who accept prepackaged narratives without any further analysis are - unfortunately - just glorified lemmings. :(

I think the biggest problem is low unemployment. Every employer is struggling somewhat to hire suitable candidates.

I hire engineers and the candidates we get are awful. Good ones keep their jobs i guess.

what's a "police separation" please?

Quitting/retiring. “Separation of service” is its bureaucratic term.

OK, thankyou very much

They quiet quit. And probably racked up overtime in the process.

They don’t even answer their phone in my community. You make a police report solely for insurance purposes, online.

I thought the argument was that they “quiet guit.”

From the same wing of journalists who claim CEOs will quit if they don’t get their big bonuses (yes, please. And go where btw?).

Seattle Police say they can't recruit anyone anymore so they want to dumb-down the test so more idiots pass. 🙃

This will end well. 🫤

Yeah I think recruitment is the current big issue, even in small towns

Huh. Do they ever not lie?

You misunderstood. They did not quit their JOBS. They did, however, quit working in many cases.

I mean it’s nice to have data but the people that need to see it Don’t believe in data. And I always assumed it was a lie because cops said it.

Well they did do a work stoppage

I was hoping the cowardly fascists did quit because of hurt feelings.

There really are some areas that have fewer cops per capita than at any time in 3 decades... but that doesn't *necessarily* mean that crime in those areas is up, yes. bsky.app/profile/torr...

“The struggle to fill law enforcement ranks is a challenge in many CA communities, urban & rural. The number of patrol officers per 100,000 residents is at its lowest point since at least 1991.” And yet, almost all forms of crime are lower than they were in 1991… www.aol.com/news/folks-b...

'Folks, it's bad': Merced sheriff warns of public safety crisis as deputy vacancies mountwww.aol.com Like many rural counties, Merced is losing deputies to jurisdictions that pay more. The shortage is so dire, Sheriff Vern Warnke is sometimes the only one available to respond to calls for help.

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