We examine whether police resignations and retirements significantly changed in the two years following public backlash related to the police murder of George Floyd. We employ Bayesian Structural Time Series to compare observed trends in each agency to synthetic counterfactuals using monthly staffing data from fourteen large municipal policing and sheriffs’ agencies in the US. In the two years since the Floyd protests began, large metropolitan agencies have experienced significant increases in resignations, retirements, or both. One agency was unaffected, two saw small improvements, and eleven saw between 2.2% and 16% excess loss of sworn full-time personnel when compared to the synthetic counterfactual. These results reaffirm the importance of understanding how agency operational and personnel patterns have shifted since the summer of 2020.
Researchers analyzed staffing data from 14 large police agencies to see if officer departures increased after the 2020 George Floyd protests and found that 11 of the 14 agencies experienced significantly higher resignation and retirement rates - with some losing up to 16% more officers than expected. These findings show that public criticism and protests following high-profile police incidents can lead to substantial workforce losses in police departments. Understanding these staffing changes is important because officer shortages can affect how police departments operate and serve their communities.
(AI-generated summary, v1, January 2026)
Citations: 2 (as of January 2026)