All over the country, in cities big and small, police departments are recruiting tiny fractions of what they used to be able to. Cleveland’s graduating class from police academy this year was 9 piglets. In 2000, they had 87. Similar drops are happening all over the country. Cities may be refusing to defund, but their PDs are shrinking anyways because the vast majority of people have realized that cops are basically evil.
Yeah, I said this sth related to this recently in a different thread. The protests have not brought material or legislative change, but they’ve shifted public opinion.
Uvalde also did a lot for this, I think. Cops are viewed more negatively and not trusted. Everyone saw basically an entire police department sit on their asses while children were massacred within hearing distance.
I would argue that, rather than people thinking “I don’t want to be a cop because I realized cops are evil”, for a lot of people who would’ve otherwise become one it’s more like “I don’t want to be a cop because people don’t like cops”.
Edit: Uvalde really was a catastrophe for the cops. It was a horrific atrocity, the worst thing imaginable, and completely stoppable. Everyone heard about it, everyone saw it, even the chuds had to condemn the police because of how indefensible it was. And it wasn’t just one cop, it was basically an entire battalion. It will be brought up every single time some bootlicker calls cops “brave”.