American cities, which for several years now have been hemorrhaging police officers left and right, look to be starting off 2024 on a depressingly familiar footing:
Seattle Police has lost close to 100 officers in 2023, continuing an exodus that has seen 700 officers flee the department since 2019.
Mike Solan, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild told The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, "Since the 16th of December, … year to date separations, 94. We're predicting over 100 before the closeout of this year and I'm sure since the 16th, we've seen an uptick of those numbers."
A similar chaos is playing out all the way across the country:
And south of Seattle, as well:
Basically, police everywhere are just straight-up leaving.
Efforts to replace Seattle's dwindling police force, meanwhile, are slow-going, understandably so:
Solan added the recruitment of new officers has not been going well. "…whom they've hired in terms of the numbers has been 61, but those people need to get out of the academy, need to get through post academy training, and then go through field training ... to make sure that they're competent human beings to conduct public safety policing."
"For our community, I would say almost half of those people don't make it out… we're faced with an overwhelming number of losses and we cannot find the numbers adequate enough to build up the catastrophic numbers we've seen lost since 2019."
How bad is it going to get there? Well, Seattle in 2023 logged the highest number of murders the city has seen since 1994. Those were the years that American cities had descended into violent, nonstop chaos. So, yeah, it's very bad.
Solan, meanwhile, is sounding a long-term alarm bell:
"That's a reality people really need to understand is that this will take decades to dig ourselves out of this hole."
Good luck, Seattle — and every American city facing this crisis.
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