Following the widespread rioting and anti-police sentiment by the Left in America, almost 300 members of the New York Police Department have taken the step towards retiring, according to the New York Post.
In the one-month period between May 25th and June 24th, 272 NYPD officers have filed for retirement. Only about 183 filed for retirement during the same period in 2019, thus marking a 49-percent increase. There are approximately 36,000 NYPD officers overall.
Addressing the spike in retirements, President Patrick Lynch of the Police Benevolent Association said that police officers all across the country are “at their breaking point,” and said that “we are all asking the same question: ‘How can we keep doing our job in this environment’?” President Ed Mullins of the Sergeants Benevolent Association similarly said that police morale is “at the lowest levels I’ve seen in 38 years.”
The far-left “defund the police” movement has been gaining traction across the country, with the Minneapolis city council unanimously approving a measure to disband their police department in favor of a “holistic, public health-oriented approach” with “non-law enforcement experience.”
In New York, the police department disbanded its 600-member anti-crime plainclothes unit, and the broader NYPD is continuing to face demands to reduce its budget and workforce.
A similar systematic protest by the police occurred in Atlanta, when hundreds of police officers called in sick or otherwise refused to show up to work, out of protest of the over-charging of police officer Garrett Rolfe; Rolfe, who shot and killed a black career criminal in self-defense, was charged with 11 different crimes, including felony murder, even though it has widely been agreed that the shooting was justified.