Joe Steiger, Business Manager with the St. Louis Police Officers Association & retired cop, joins Mark Reardon to discuss why so many police officers are leaving the force.
“The officers are on those front lines, day in and day out. They have their vacation days canceled, rescheduled, and they’re working 12+ hour shifts. It’s exhausting. That plays into a lot of these people's decisions,” Steiger commented.
He later said, “The last numbers that I saw, the actual police officers that are actually out in the street were about 735 or 740, that are actually out patrolling. Out of that, probably only 400-450 are actually the ones in uniform out in the streets and they are dealing with 350,000 calls per year… When you are down nearly 300 police officers, it’s just overwhelming.”