10
Loading video...
By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has responded to a report that says a growing number of police officers are leaving California for his state.
The Republican governor shared an article from DailyMail.com that reported that officers are leaving California because of the state's "soft-on-crime" policies for jobs in Texas and other states that are seen as being tougher on crime.
Abbott said the officers were welcome in Texas, but told them to "never forget" the policies they fled and to "always vote the right way."
Read More on U.S.
"Welcome to Texas. We support our Law Enforcement officers & demand law & order," Abbott wrote on X, formerly Twitter, alongside the article. "But never forget the leftist policies that you fled and always vote the right way."
Newsweek has contacted Abbott's office and California Governor Gavin Newsom's office for comment via email.
The DailyMail.com report quoted one officer, Evan Leona, who said he left his job as a detective in Fresno, California, to work for Denton Police in Texas, saying he has met "more than a hundred officers" in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that have left California.
Maria Haberfeld, a professor of police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that despite the lack of empirical evidence, anecdotal reports about officers leaving California should not be dismissed.
"Usually, police officers tend to be harsher on crime than an average member of the public," Haberfeld told Newsweek.
"From my conversations with police officers from other states, it is quite clear that 'soft on crime' attitude is demoralizing and contributes to low morale."
Haberfeld said: "Scholars of policing note that police officers are motivated by victims of crime, seeing the perpetrators on the streets, sometimes a few hours after the crimes are committed. [It] definitely contributes to cynicism and possibly the desire to leave the force as, at least in their eyes, 'justice has not been done.'"
...
Police departments across the U.S. saw a historic exodus of officers in the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd and the nationwide protests against police brutality that followed.
But a recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF, a nonprofit policing think tank, showed that while police departments are turning a corner, many still face challenges when it comes to staffing.
Responding agencies reported hiring more sworn officers in 2023 than in any of the past four years, and fewer officers resigned than in 2021 or 2022, according to the survey.
The survey also showed that small and medium-sized departments had more sworn officers than they did in January 2020, but large departments are still more than 5 percent below their staffing levels from then. However, it showed that smaller agencies—those with fewer than 50 officers—were seeing higher resignation rates.
In Texas, Abbott has repeatedly touted his efforts to secure the southern border and reduce crime in his state, blaming the Biden administration's policies for a surge in illegal border crossings.
Abbott's aggressive border measures include placing a 1,000-foot-long floating barrier of buoys in the Rio Grande, placing razor wire along the U.S.-Mexico border, and busing migrants to Democrat-led cities including Los Angeles.
More recently, Texas has come down hard on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. Abbott came under fire after state troopers in riot gear cracked down and forcefully arrested protesters at the University of Texas at Austin at his behest. More than 50 students were arrested and charged with criminal trespassing, but those charges were all dropped.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines