Exodus on Hold?

An article from a few days ago, but we think that SeeBS is muddying up the waters:

• The police exodus is on pause, data suggest.

  Prior to Chicago's mayoral election, the head of the city's police union told the New York Times in March that if Brandon Johnson was elected "we're going to see an exodus like we've never seen before."

  At the time, the police department was suffering from a wave of resignations and retirements that left the city with 11,711 officers, according to staffing data from the Chicago Inspector General's Office, about 1,500 fewer cops than it had in 2019.

  The pandemic and the so-called great resignation have left Chicago and cities like Dallas, Atlanta and Seattle with reduced police forces.

  Four months later, Johnson is now Chicago's mayor, and that exodus hasn't happened.

  However, in that time, the city has netted only 17 police officers – staunching the exits – but far away from reaching pre-pandemic levels.

They claim in the last cited paragraph that CPD is up 17 officers and for this reason the "exodus" hasn't happened. And a few paragraphs up, we're down 1,500 from 2019. What we think they're trying to claim is that CPD is up 17 officers from the 2019 loss of 1,500, meaning we're down only 1,483 from the pre-"pandemic" number?

So an increase from the decrease? Whatever it is, they're doing it badly - and that's the point.

Look, we've looked at numbers, run them through databases and studied the bull$hit that the Department puts out and guess what? No one can pin down exactly how many officers we have on a daily basis because it changes on a daily basis. People retire, people get hired, officers lateral out, officers don't complete probation, officers are detailed to outside agency task forces, officers die.

There was a huge - HUGE! - hiring wave back in the early 90's. The Clinton money was flowing to cities and the "crack wars" were in full swing. Slick Willie had "pivoted" to the center and was spreading his anti-crime message. The Academy was pushing through classes of 120-to-160 every month and hired nearly 5,000 people from 1993-to-1998. Chicago went from having the oldest Department in a major US city to the youngest....in a span of five years.

And all of those people are maxed out/maxing out in the next three years.

What we saw after 2019 was people who were (1) fifty years of age (2) with over 25 years on who were (3) fed up with the bull$hit and left. Now, in an inhospitable climate for policing with "oversight" out the wazoo and at least five investigative bodies looking to fire/imprison officers and deny them a pension, we think the pause is about to be un-paused. 

The city is panicking and hiring anything with a pulse, shady backgrounds be damned. The so-called "exodus" was merely delayed a short while.