Minneapolis has struggled to rebuild its police department after hundreds of officers quit in the two years since George Floyd was killed by a city police officer.
Cyrus Collins, left, an aspiring Minneapolis police officer, works his part-time job as a cook at The Blue Barn during the Minnesota State Fair, on Sept. 3, 2022, in Falcon Heights, Minn. Collins was among a handful of people at a recent Minneapolis Police Department recruiting session as the department seeks to rebuild its ranks following the departure of hundreds of officers in the wake of George Floyd's killing.
Crime rose in Minneapolis during the pandemic, as in many American cities. Homicide offenses nearly doubled from 2019 to 2021, aggravated assaults jumped by one-third, and car-jackings — which the city only began tracking in fall 2020 — exploded. And the city's crime problem has been compounded by a mass exodus of officers who cited post-traumatic stress after Floyd was killed, gutting the department of roughly one-third of its personnel.
Collins sports a facial tattoo of an obscenity against police. He told The Associated Press that it is directed at the “evil ones,” such as those who killed Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who was shot to death by officers serving a search warrant in Louisville, Kentucky. The department said it has no policy governing tattoos.
But he was on the fence about applying. He has a 1-year-old son and worried about work-life balance and the dangers of the job. Statistics bear that out. Among 184 police agencies surveyed in the U.S. and Canada, the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum found that resignations jumped by 43% from 2019 through 2021, and retirements jumped 24%. In the face of those departures, overall hiring fell by 4%.
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