Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser made the claim in a speech. Mural unveiling ceremony On September 27, the Washington DC Police Department announced it had lost approximately 300 to 400 officers over the past four years.
“We need more police officers. We don’t have the staff we need. And sadly, in the last four years, we’ve lost three to four hundred police officers,” she said. “Our school has never had an officer. And we have policies that make it difficult to hire new officers.”
Florida Sen. Rick Scott responded to Bowser’s comments. X, said on the platform formerly known as Twitter, “This is the result of the Democrats’ plan to defund and demonize the police.” In June 2020, after the death of George Floyd, Bowser had a “Black Lives Matter” mural painted on the street near the White House, but protesters called for “defunding the police.” The text was added. fox news.
This is the result of Democratic policies to defund and demonize the police. https://t.co/9gudmVRMrl
— Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) October 3, 2023
D.C. police said the net loss over the past three years was 450, the lowest in half a century. washington post. The force had 3,350 sworn officers at the end of March, but Police Chief Robert J. Contee III expects that number to drop to 3,130 by the end of fiscal year 2024, the paper reported. Ta.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) directed us to confirm the facts. document It shows data on executive hiring and turnover from 2018 to 2023. From 2019 to 2023, the Metropolitan Police Department lost 1,324 officers (for various reasons including death, retirement, resignation, etc.) and added 846 officers. 478 losses.
“Reliable, comprehensive national data on police staffing and employment do not exist. With over 15,000 local agencies (cities, townships, villages, towns, and counties), such data is difficult to maintain. Probably.” Joseph A. Schaefersaid a criminal justice professor at Saint Louis University in an email to Check Your Fact. “What we are left with is a small number of studies that suggest trends in police hiring and staffing, even if we are not confident that we understand the problem completely accurately.”
Schaefer directed us to the Check Your Fact data. Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) surveyed 179 respondents from 37 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. According to PERF, executive staffing levels from 2020 to 2021 decreased by 3.48%.
“Loss and staffing levels are not always the same,” Schaefer added. “An agency could lose 10% of its employees, but maintain 95% staffing if it can fill in enough talent to offset some of the headcount loss/turnover.”
“This is a national trend. Recruiting police officers across the country, especially in large cities, is becoming more difficult. Several reasons are clear. “We’re not being competitive compared to our jobs,” he said. Richard Bennett, a criminal justice professor at American University, said in an email to Check Your Fact. “Secondly, the atmosphere has changed and police officers are no longer seen as public servants who have the best interests of the community in mind. It’s not about children thinking about their futures.”
Check Your Fact has reached out to Bowser and multiple criminal justice experts for comment and will update this article accordingly if any of these sources comment.
