“Depolicing”

An Austin Police union has exposed the ‘miserable’ conditions faced by officers after the defund movement stripped departments and gutted the workforce.

George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis cop and the resulting Black Lives Matter riots led to widespread demonization of police forces across the US.

Austin PD’s budget was hammered with a $150million cut approved by the Democrat-run Texas city’s council after its own scandal following the shooting of an unarmed black man in April 2020 – just weeks before Floyd’s death.

A small Minnesota city will soon be without its police force after the chief and several other officers all resigned, officials said.

The Goodhue City Council approved the resignations of the chief, a full-time officer and five part-time officers during a special meeting on Monday that was initially supposed to address pay increases.

22 bucks an hour does not go far.

New research found that liberals are particularly susceptible

The recent conviction of Tou Thao, an officer involved in the killing of George Floyd, marks yet another chapter in the ongoing national conversation about police brutality and racial bias. This case, and the protests it ignited, thrust the issue into the media spotlight, shaping public perceptions of police violence against black Americans. But, as urgent and resonant as these events have been, it’s still critical to ask whether the heightened media attention distorted our understanding of the true scale and nature of police use of force.

In the summer of 2020, Denver school leaders quickly banished police officers from campuses and directed the funds toward social workers and psychologists. The city, like many across the nation, was roiled by protests against law enforcement after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

School board members cited as a major reason reams of data showing that Black students were far more likely than white students to be arrested.

But a spasm of violence affecting Denver city schools this year has brought a sudden reversal. Armed officers were quickly deployed this spring for the final weeks of school. And come fall, school resource officers will return permanently to Denver schools, as fears over student safety have mounted.

I guess virtue signaling is less potent than lead.

Related … Scot Peterson, who hid during 2018 Parkland school shooting, found not guilty of neglect and negligence

The union representing Halifax Regional Police (HRP) officers says the service is losing members at a rate the city can’t replace.

The interim president of the Halifax Regional Police Association warns staffing and morale are at an all-time low, and keeping people at work is a struggle.

Experts say police recruitment has failed to keep up with the needs of the 21st century.

The police are depolicing themselves.

It was in the name of racial equity that the Denver school board voted unanimously in the summer of 2020 to remove police officers from the city’s public high schools.

Minority kids, board members argued, were disproportionally ticketed and arrested by the armed officers, who had worked in the local high schools for more than two decades.

A man wearing the vest of the new “Peacekeeper” corps deployed over the Memorial Day weekend to stem the mayhem on a holiday weekend that has become an opportunity for murder tallies to soar, was arrested for a violent attack.

Police agencies across the country are experiencing alarming levels of officer turnover.

The George Floyd protests that erupted in May 2020 not only ignited a nationwide debate about police reform but also sent shockwaves through the ranks of law enforcement. Experienced officers have reportedly fled large urban departments for the relative calm of smaller, suburban departments. While this exodus has garnered some attention, the conversation has largely overlooked the long-term consequences of elevated police turnover, especially for the nation’s largest metropolitan departments. This trend poses a significant challenge to American policing at a time when many cities are grappling with rising violent crime rates and budgetary constraints.

After the election of Brandon Johnson as mayor of Chicago, many are bracing for more of the same kinds of negligent public-safety policies preferred by his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot. Johnson has made it clear that he will not invest in more police resources or officers, claiming that neither will make Chicagoans safer. He’s wrong, of course. Johnson and other progressive leaders might take a lesson on better public-safety policies from an unlikely source: Europe.

For years, Aurora residents have heard the allegations of violence and criminality by some members of the Colorado city’s police force: officers punching, choking, and threatening to shoot unarmed civilians; holding innocent people at gunpoint; stalking and sexually assaulting people.

In 2018, a man died after Aurora officers punched and pummeled him with batons and shocked him more than a dozen times with stun guns. A year later, an on-duty officer with a blood-alcohol level more than five times the legal limit passed out while driving. He wasn’t fired, arrested, or charged with a crime, and was later promoted.

Texas’ woke capital, Austin, is in the midst of a policing crisis with over 300 vacancies and cops quitting because they feel disrespected, multiple sources tell The Post.

“We’re right there with Portland and Seattle and San Francisco as being one of those places where if you’re at all conservative or in law enforcement, it’s become a hostile place,” Lt. Brian Moon, who retired last month, told The Post of the city he protected for 23 years.