A Large-Scale Study of the Police Retention Crisis

By Ben Grunwald

Beginning in 2020, law enforcement experts widely claimed that a surge in police separations triggered a national retention crisis and that political activism after George Floyd's murder was a principal cause. We lack data, however, to track such trends in the national police labor market. Using information from Police Officer Safety and Training (POST) agencies, I construct an Interstate Police Employment Database (IPED) on every job held by every officer in all 6,800 local law enforcement agencies across fifteen states that, together, cover half the U.S. population. I then conduct the largest empirical study of the law enforcement labor market to date. My findings show that the increase in separations in IPED agencies after the summer of 2020 was smaller, later, less sudden, and possibly less pervasive than the retention-crisis narrative suggests. All told, the cumulative impact on the labor force by the end of 2021 was just 1%. Aggregate figures, however, mask variation at the agency level. As I show, a substantial minority of large agencies meaningfully shrank by the end of 2021. I also provide evidence that local political activism cannot explain local separation rates, raising some doubt about whether the protests were a principal cause of rising turnover.

Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2024-41