We monitor police staffing levels in several agencies across the U.S. In one large, Western police department, we found that in the seven months following the Floyd protests, voluntary resignations of sworn officers were nearly three times (279%) higher than baseline expectations.

In some places, extreme staffing pressure has led to rapid increases in police response times to emergencies. For example, in Salt Lake City, the police staffing crisis led to response times nearly doubling for priority calls in 2020 and 2021.

In conversations with police chiefs and other leaders at smaller and suburban agencies, we hear that they have faced a lower-intensity staffing challenge for more than a decade.

However, those at larger, metropolitan agencies nationwide say the crisis has boiled over, and they fear they are losing the ability to provide baseline levels of service. Both groups of police executives directly link the staffing crisis to fallout from the 2020 George Floyd protests.

Although our studies do not follow individual officers, recent reporting by The Marshall Project uses yearly federal economic data to show that nationally the police profession experienced a small decline in total employees – including both sworn officers and civilian staff – between March 2020 and August 2022.

This may reflect agencies offering highly lucrative bonuses for officers willing to transfer agencies, rather than swarms of officers leaving the profession altogether.

When speaking with police chiefs in large agencies, a consistent story emerges: They say officers are not leaving the profession, but instead are leaving for other nearby agencies that offer better pay and a more positive work environment.

This phenomenon, known as “lateral transfers,” is rapidly shifting officers away from large, urban departments and toward smaller police agencies and sheriff’s departments.

In an ongoing study, we analyze turnover data from 14 large agencies over the last decade and observe that one suburban agency and one sheriff’s department actually experienced decreases in resignations and retirements during the period. Meanwhile, the large urban departments in our sample generally experienced surges in resignations and retirements since the summer of 2020, indicating there are turnover patterns that benefit some agencies, while harming others.

It makes economic sense for agencies to compete for already trained officers. Turnover is expensive. Hiring and training a new officer can cost one to five times the annual salary of an individual officer.

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