'We are now the devil': With COVID and Floyd aftermath, New Jersey cops say they're burned out
WOODLAND PARK, N.J. – Law enforcement is a profession in crisis.
Any police officer will say the job has always been stressful. But something’s changed since the world-shaking murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last spring and the global protests against police brutality that followed — public sentiment has turned against them, some officers say.
It doesn’t matter that New Jersey has stayed relatively free from the controversial shootings and use of force that have inflamed other parts of the country. Police recruiting is down. Retirements are up. And those who remain work with the constant fear that they'll be the next officer featured on cable news after a video of one of their arrests goes viral.
Add to that maelstrom the greatest public health emergency in generations and the recipe for comprehensive burnout is complete.
"I've never seen cops as stressed as we are right now," said Police Chief Keith Germain, leader of the Barnegat Police Department and public affairs chair for the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police. "And I've been around for a while."
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To break this rising tide, state officials are leaning on the mental health programs recently established by the attorney general’s office to find and help officers who may be wilting beneath the pressures. But conversations with the rank-and-file show there's a long way to go as law enforcement copes with both the remnants of the COVID pandemic and intense public scrutiny following several high-profile deaths of Black people in police custody over the past year.
Among the attorney general's recent initiatives is an early warning system that compiles complaints and infractions to spot possibly troubled officers, and a program created in 2019 that has trained and deployed hundreds of "resiliency officers" to help colleagues in local departments.
Officials initially hoped the resiliency program, which also required all New Jersey police officers to complete a course on coping mechanisms by the end of next year, would help cut the rising number of police suicides.
Somewhat serendipitously, the program had just begun when the COVID pandemic struck North Jersey early in 2020. The 200 resiliency officers, trained by the state and returned to their departments, provided immeasurable help as the sickness spread, said Cherie Castellano, leader of the affiliated peer-support hotline Cop2Cop.
"We noticed that the top 10 counties with the most COVID had the most calls back and forth between the resiliency program officers," Castellano said. "It has blown me away... These resiliency officers are doing unbelievable stuff to help other officers and help their community. It’s a positive, amazing thing."
Since then, the state has trained about 650 more officers, according to the attorney general's office.
They'll be needed, too. During the first four months of this year, there have been more than 4,200 calls between police and Cop2Cop's liaisons, Castellano said. That puts it on track to overwhelm last year's total of nearly 14,000.
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And an affiliated hotline set up specifically for resiliency officers has seen more than 4,200 calls back and forth, positioning it to quickly exceed last year’s eight-month tally of about 5,600, Castellano said.
The numbers are encouraging given law enforcement's legendary aversion to asking for help — several officers said last spring they were wary of the program because they thought it would lead superiors to question their fitness for duty.
State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said that New Jersey’s 38,000 law enforcement personnel have been under tremendous pressure from both COVID and what he called the "crisis of trust" created by the Floyd murder and other incidents.
But he believes officers have risen to the challenge.
"I think New Jersey’s police officers deserve our great praise and gratitude for the way they have continued to answer the call to service during the last 15 months, given the immense danger and scrutiny they have faced," Grewal said in an email to NorthJersey.com, which like Paste BN is a part of the Paste BN Network. "From all that I have seen, they have met this tremendously difficult moment with professionalism and integrity."
Kind words from the attorney general only go so far, however.
In interviews with a number of officers throughout the region, many said they'd already reached their breaking point.
'We are now the devil'
The officers, who requested anonymity so they could speak frankly, expressed an extraordinary amount of frustration with their jobs, the public and politicians.
Officers said they feel like the public will second-guess every decision they make, even when it's the right one. And that politicians will abandon them at the first sign of trouble, even though lawmakers created the laws police must enforce.
As a result, several said they're shying away from proactive enforcement; one officer said his department had nearly stopped pulling people over because no one wanted to risk their pay, pension or health care over a traffic stop.
Several called the job futile and said they'd retire tomorrow if they could afford it. Others said they see the media as the “enemy.” Two relayed stories of recent officer suicides.
"Law enforcement feels like we're on our own. Law enforcement feels like we are now the devil," said one Bergen County officer, who requested anonymity. "We don't have the backing we used to have, we don't have the support we used to have, we don't have the public's confidence that we used to have... it's bad. It sucks. The public needs to stop thinking that we're all corrupt monsters, because we aren't."
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Germain, the Barnegat chief, also said officers worry they will be held criminally liable for a split-second decision. He's concerned that trepidation will lead to paralysis by analysis when officers can least afford it.
"The scenarios where the officer is at greatest risk are also the scenarios when there is the least amount of time to think," Germain said. "That's a huge stressor for them right now... It comes up in conversation almost daily now. Officers are fearful of making a mistake."
All of this has woven together to form what many officers feel is the most hostile environment for law enforcement in decades.
"We've seen this cyclically every once in a while going back to Rodney King," said Randy Petersen, a senior researcher at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. "But even that was not anything like the level we've seen over the past year."
'Near crisis mode'
Many experts said the perception of a toxic national environment has led to trouble recruiting new officers and retaining those already on the job.
A decade ago, more than 10,000 candidates would apply to the New Jersey State Police during each recruitment cycle, deputy superintendent Lt. Col. Geoffrey Noble said.
During the current cycle, however, only about 3,600 have applied, he said.
It's hard to tell if that's because of the fallout after Floyd's murder, protracted criticism of the police or something else — Noble said the number has been falling steadily for several years.
But the low figures shocked experts such as Tom Shea, director of the Police Graduate Studies program at Seton Hall University and a retired Long Branch police lieutenant.
"I was stunned," Shea said. "It's always been the most competitive law enforcement job nationwide outside the federal government."
Jason Williams, a professor of justice studies at Montclair State University and a Black Lives Matter activist, said students have told him they were shying away from police work because the Floyd murder and similar police-involved killings had opened their eyes to injustices they’d not seen before.
“Law enforcement agents will tell you that it has to do with calls for greater accountability, officers being indicted, convicted and so forth,” Williams said. “But a lot of young folks are also saying, ‘No, I don’t want to be part of an institution that does that.'”
Regardless of the cause, numbers are down.
Pat Colligan, head of the New Jersey State Policemen's Benevolent Association, said departments are in "near crisis mode" because highly qualified candidates are looking elsewhere.
"The quantity is still there, but if any chief says they're still getting the quality they were pre-Ferguson, they're just not being honest," Colligan said, referencing the 2014 riots that followed the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. "It's been difficult."
There has also been a mass officer departure in other parts of the country.
During the first four months of the year, 79 Philadelphia police officers announced their intention to retire within four years, according to a story published last month by U.S. News and World Report. Just 13 officers made similar declarations during the same period in 2020, the story stated.
And more than 5,300 New York City police officers either retired or put in their papers to leave in 2020, a 75% spike over the prior year, according to the New York Post.
“Cops are forming a conga line down at the pension section and I don’t blame them,” Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told the Post. “NYPD cops are looking for better jobs with other departments or even embarking on new careers.”
It's hard to calculate how many officers have retired in New Jersey, or if the state has seen the same uptick as in other places.
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Despite the lack of statewide data, officers are telling their colleagues they can't wait to retire, said Dalton Price, a retired lieutenant and current president of the Bronze Shields of Passaic County, an African American law enforcement group.
"They say, 'As soon as I get my 25 years, I'm leaving, because I don't trust what the system is going to do to me,'" Price said. "And that is a for-real feeling... if you can get your pension and go, why stay? What are you staying for?"
Still, the attorney general acknowledged the trouble in recruiting and retention. He said in an email that stress is pushing some officers to leave while pushing potential recruits away from the academy doors. "That is the current reality," Grewal said.
He expects the situation to improve as the state retrains officers to de-escalate dangerous situations, avoid the use of force when possible and adopt a guardian mentality instead of a warrior mentality.
Until then, cops will have to make do.
“Eventually they’ll have to adapt to it,” said Williams, of Montclair State. “This is an institution that has never liked change.”
Follow Steve Janoski on Twitter: @stevejanoski.