(NewsNation) — Police departments across the United States and Canada are reporting larger rosters of sworn officers in their ranks after 2023 saw more cops being hired than at any other time in the past four years, according to a recent survey.
The survey, which was conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum, showed that responding departments hired 30% more sworn officers than in 2020 and 6.4% more than in 2019. In addition to the new additions, departments also reported fewer resignations and retirements last year than they did in 2021 and 2022.
The hiring surge comes after police departments experienced a drop in sworn officers due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
According to data from the survey, which included 214 departments across 40 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada, the number of sworn police officers was 0.4% higher at the start of 2024 than it was a year before but nearly 5% higher than it was in 2020.
“I just think that the past four years have been particularly challenging for American policing,” Chuck Wexler, the executive director of PERF, a nonprofit policing think tank, told NBC News. “And our survey shows we’re finally starting to turn a corner.”
Large police departments (those with more than 250 officers) reported the greatest staffing challenges, while medium and small-sized departments reported employing a higher number of officers than they were in 2020, the survey reported.
The largest hiring over the past four years took place in smaller departments, which reported a 38% increase in officers in 2023 compared to 2019. Conversely, large law enforcement agencies reported just a 5% jump in staffing over the same time.
Meanwhile, the number of officers who resigned continued to drop in 2023, falling by 21.6% from 2022 after three straight years of increased numbers of cops leaving their jobs. In 2021, resignations among sworn police officers grew by 40% over 2020 as more officers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs, data shows.
NBC News reported that many of those resignations took place in the wake of Floyd’s killing, after which there were increased protests against police brutality and heightened levels of scrutiny of how officers did their jobs.
Wexler told NBC News that because the survey only included numbers, it was not possible to determine if officers were leaving for jobs with other departments or leaving law enforcement entirely. While large and medium-sized departments saw drops in resignations, smaller departments (those with up to 49 officers on staff) saw a jump in cops leaving those agencies.
Despite the encouraging signs, however, Wexler said the profession isn’t “out of the woods.”
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