CPD leaders said the retirement rate has now stabilized. But experts warned such a large number of more senior officers exiting may contribute to a “brain drain” at the top of the department.
Chicago police officers hold an outdoor roll call during a prayer vigil at 66th Street and Ellis Avenue in Chicago on Sept. 10, 2021.
“A lot of people left early for their reasons, but the morale is down in the department for sure,” Affaneh said, adding that officers have left due to working long hours, having their days off canceled and the department being short-staffed. Police work the scene where an officer shot a person in the leg on the 4500 block of South Drexel Boulevard in the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago on July 25, 2021.
Brown called it a misconception that 2020 was a particularly bad year for officer exits, noting the attrition rate was 4%. Some police leaders have said the requirements for officers to be vaccinated has only accelerated the rate of officers looking to leave. Some retirees should be retiring, because at a certain point, they may not be as effective as they were in their prime, Fox said. But some who have a lot of experience walk out the door, which could hurt. It also depends on what units people are leaving and where cuts are being made.
“Unless you’re talking about huge drops in the police size, then anyone who thinks that it’s just going to be doomsday is sort of jumping the gun,” he said.The attrition rate was affected by pandemic restrictions on class sizes at the city’s police academy, Brown said, a factor that is now reversing.
The New York City Police Department requires 60 hours of college credits, but other departments such as those in Los Angeles and Philadelphia only require high school diplomas, Brown said. Many departments in addition to CPD have also been mitigating the departures by using more aggressive recruitment tactics and changing the application requirements such as waiving or lowering the amount of college credits needed. Although, some experts warn that lowering the educational standards for applicants or loosening background checks could cause issues later.
“You can find evidence that in police departments across the country is that when there is pressure to recruit, they loosen up sometimes, and then later, they’ll call a blue-ribbon panel together to say, ‘Hey, what happened here? How do we have this corruption in the particular city or how did we have this misconduct come about?’” Malinowski said.
Especially in Chicago, experts said it is psychologically difficult to be an officer while responding to trauma every day, and feeling like they’re not accepted in society or making a difference.
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