Southwest Virginia’s Police Officers Quitting at Alarming Rate
Virginia | July 6, 2021
“In total, Roanoke County saw 28 of its police officers leave during 2020, about one-fifth of its department,” The Roanoke Times reported. “That is both abnormal and normal all at once — abnormal because it’s twice as high as the turnover the agency would expect in a typical year. Normal because it tracks with a surge in police departures unfolding nationwide.”
After several volatile years culminating in a summer of massive riots around the country in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, many police in urban areas are simply walking off the job.
In Minneapolis, where George Floyd died at the hands of Derek Chauvin, the ex-Minneapolis police officer who has been convicted of murder, the city began 2021 with 200 fewer officers on the force than it did in 2020. More than 150 officers there were on “extended leave” and several more took early retirement.
The Seattle Police declared a “staffing crisis” earlier this year. In Louisville, Kentucky, the depleted police force lost 20 percent of its officers.
All three of those cities saw mass rioting and lawlessness last summer…
(Excerpts from the Virginia Star)