Daily Caller, by Marlo Safi: New York Police Department officers are retiring at a staggering rate amid a crime surge in the city and growing tensions with Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Hill reported Thursday.
In the last week, 179 NYPD officers have filed for retirement, which marks a 411% increase from 2019’s 35, according to the Hill.
The retirements follow violent riots that roiled the city, De Blasio’s decision to slash the NYPD budget and the decision to disband the anti-crime unit. Soon after the unit’s 600 plainclothes officers were reassigned to new roles, shootings in the city surged by more than 358% in mid-June.
The protests began the week of May 25, the day George Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes. Since that date, 503 NYPD officers have filed for retirement, a 75% increase from the 287 a year prior.
“While the decision to retire is a personal one and can be attributed to a range of factors, it is a troubling trend that we are closely monitoring,” NYPD Sgt. Mary Frances O’Donnell, a spokesperson for the NYPD deputy commissioner, told CNN.
O’Donnell told CNN that when someone retired, the pension section sends a notice of who filed for retirement. What is usually a page or two at the most has become 6 pages of notices.
“Of course, cops are retiring at a higher rate,” Chris Monahan, president of the Captains Endowment Association, told CNN. “We’ve been abandoned by the NYPD and elected officials.”
Prophetic Link:
“We are living in the midst of an “epidemic of crime,” at which thoughtful, God-fearing men everywhere stand aghast. The corruption that prevails, it is beyond the power of the human pen to describe. Every day brings fresh revelations of political strife, bribery, and fraud. Every day brings its heart-sickening record of violence and lawlessness, of indifference to human suffering, of brutal, fiendish destruction of human life. Every day testifies to the increase of insanity, murder, and suicide. Who can doubt that satanic agencies are at work among men with increasing activity to distract and corrupt the mind, and defile and destroy the body?” Ministry of Healing, page 142.4