In the wake George Floyd’s murder and the ensuring unrest, more than 200 officers in the Minneapolis Police Department have applied to leave their jobs due to post-traumatic stress disorder, The New York Times reports.
Veterans of the force say they’ve never seen morale as low as it is now, with one officer noting, “I’m still surprised that we’ve got cops showing up to work, to be honest.”
Sixty-five officers have already left the department, which has 850 uniformed officers. The ensuing manpower shortage and morale problems have impacted call responses and public interactions, with some officers choosing not to get involved for fear of prompting a citizen complaint.
The Times reviewed an email from Cmdr. Scott Gerlicher, head of the Special Operations and Intelligence Division, in which he told supervisors this month that, “Due to significant staffing losses of late,” the department was “looking at all options” for responding to calls, including shift, schedule and organizational changes.
City council member Jeremiah Ellison said that police are resisting change, the police are saying, “You’re picking on us, you don’t know how hard our job is and we’re going home.”
Many officers feel they are being unfairly stereotyped as the same kind of officer that Derek Chauvin, the officer who is charged in George Floyd’s murder, was. Chauvin had more than a dozen complaints filed against him in his career.
The director of the Office of Violence Prevention in Minneapolis, Sasha Cotton said police are not feeling is not dissimilar to the feelings that members of the community feel.
“Our officers are experiencing what so often our young men and boys, who we service through the program, say they feel,” she said. “They feel like they are being judged based on the behavior of some of their peers.”