“They are financially locked in,” Moskos says, “If you quit, you don’t get your pension. Morale may be low, but, in Moskos’s view, that’s always been the case. Many of the officers who retired in 2020 were probably going to retire in a couple of years anyway, says Moskos, who suspects very few police would quit outright. Pensions and relatively high pay make it appealing to stay. Police jobs are often last on the chopping block when cities are considering budget cuts. Policing is a secure job, according to Peter Moskos, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which explains the relatively small increase in retirements and resignations over 2020. Law enforcement’s employment numbers tend not to fluctuate dramatically. Looking across the past decade, police employment in 2020 was roughly the same as in 2018. Compared with the previous year, the 2020 numbers appear dramatic. The survey of 194 departments compares 2020 with the previous year, but 2019 came at the end of a long period of steady police job growth. Many of the most worried officials have latched onto recent data from a non-scientific survey conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum think tank, that shows a 45% increase in the law enforcement retirement rate and other “dramatic” losses. Cities - big and small - are jumping on that offer, with claims that their police departments are running out of officers. The Biden Administration recently announced that cities can use part of the $350 billion American Rescue Plan relief money to hire more officers to combat gun violence. The push to hire more police is gaining ground. Source: Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Bureau of Labor Statistics
0 kommentar(er)
