Chief Howard Hall flipped through the notes heâs made from exit interviews over the past year: There was an officer who left to go into nursing, another who went to an insurance company, one became a welder, two planned to make the move to the roofing business. In total, Roanoke County saw 28 of its police officers leave during 2020, about one-fifth of its department. That is both abnormal and normal all at once â abnormal because itâs twice as high as the turnover the agency would expect in a typical year. Normal because it tracks with a surge in police departures unfolding nationwide. âThis is going on everywhere,â Hall said. âItâs going to take a long time to catch up in terms of where we are from a vacancies perspective. âThatâs very problematic. We need good people coming into this profession. When things are happening to deter that, thatâs certainly not progress. Thatâs going to create negative community effects for the long term.â A new survey of nearly 200 police departments nationwide found attrition among officers had jumped over the past year. Resignations were up by 18% over the prior year and retirements had climbed by 45% among agencies polled, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based policy institute. The survey pool was too small to create a statistically representative snapshot of all police departments but offers a glimpse into what many are reporting. The trend is emerging against a backdrop of intense debate about policing in America as well as pandemic stress and concerns about low pay for a high-demand job. It also coincides with a longer period that has seen a steadily shrinking applicant pool for policing positions â creating what the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2019 described as a recruitment crisis. The Christiansburg Police Department said it could attest to the growing difficulty of finding candidates. Filling vacancies â already a time-consuming process as training a recruit takes months â is becoming far more challenging. âIn years past we would typically receive between 50 and 100 applications when we advertised an opening,â Assistant Chief Chris Ramsey wrote in an email. âNow we are lucky to get ten or fifteen applicants for multiple openings. Only a fraction of those will meet the minimum qualifications and actually appear for applicant testing.â The dilemma gets further exacerbated, he added, because multiple agencies are usually searching for new officers at the same time, tightening competition for the limited number of contenders out there. Several agencies said they were also losing ground to the private sector, with a rising number of officers leaving the profession altogether to embark on new careers. The Montgomery County Sheriffâs Office said it saw its numbers on that front start to climb last year amid what agency leaders described as âoverwhelming anti-law enforcement rhetoricâ at the national and state levels. âThe perceived lack of support in conjunction with proposed policing reform initiatives such as the elimination of qualified immunity has created an atmosphere where deputies are looking to change careers by seeking employment within the private sector,â Sheriff Hank Partin and Chief Deputy Brad St. Clair said in an email. Montgomery County has lost 26 deputies, about 23% of its manpower, over the past 12 months. That contrasts with four officer departures recorded in 2019 and two in 2018. Turnover hasnât been identical across agencies. The Police Executive Research Forum said it was seeing the starkest numbers in larger departments and communities. Locally, the Roanoke Police Department had a total of 38 vacancies, roughly 15% of its force, in June. The Floyd County Sheriffâs Office had none. Montgomery County was working to fill five remaining vacancies that month. Roanoke County just put a new batch of 15 recruits into training but had hoped to hire about 20. Christiansburg said it lost four officers last year, about 6.5% of its police force, a rise over an average year but not severely so. Three of those departures were retirements, including two early retirements, and one was a resignation of an officer who was just 18 months into his career. That officer cited anti-police rhetoric dominating the national discourse as the reason for his decision, Ramsey said. Hall said two of the frustrations heard again and again in exit interviews were salary and benefits â something Roanoke County leaders are taking action on â and the political climate around policing. âThat may be a more difficult problem to deal with,â he said of the latter, adding that even in places with strong local support for law enforcement, like Roanoke County, a toll can be taken by a broader wave of hostility. âItâs that bigger picture,â Hall said. âYou know if you turn on the national news, there is a lot of negativity out there about law enforcement and directed toward law enforcement. We believe thatâs having an impact on peopleâs interest in our line of work. I mean, it canât help but.â