Chicago has been featured as a case study in failed leftist policies that are running the city into the ground. Democrat politicians there are the poster children for leftist inner-city reform — à la “social justice,” poor public school education, and welfare addiction — which is hurting law enforcement because it continues the cycle of poverty, ultimately leading to gangs, drugs, and violence. “People don’t want to be the police,” said Alderman Anthony Beale. “The police don’t want to be the police.” Ergo, Chicago cops are retiring early and new recruitment numbers have dropped to one-sixth of past figures.

Chicago isn’t the only city facing these shortages, however. Portland lost an entire unit due to restraints on their ability to capably police. The police shortage problem is so bad in Portland that Democrat Mayor Ted Wheeler, formerly a defund-police advocate, is now asking for more money to hire retired cops to help fill the gap. The Portland police overall feel that they have zero support either from the community or from the politicians in power due to the policies that keep tying their hands. Police have been reduced to guard dogs without teeth and criminals are no longer afraid to commit crimes. Throwing money at it by hiring retired cops won’t do any good if you won’t let the police do their job.

This feeling of being spit upon is echoed in places like New York City, where, as one retired police officer put it, “One day, the good guys became the bad guys and the bad guys became the good guys.” And that’s in a city where we just remembered the heroism of police and firefighters on 9/11.

At the beginning of October, the Austin Police Department asked the citizenry not to call 911 if the emergency was non-life-threatening, not in progress, or if the suspects were no longer at the scene of the crime or in sight. This is due to a cop shortage of that city’s own making because it decided to defund the police. In fact, Democrat mega-donors like George Soros are so intent on keeping Austin PD defunded that he reportedly gave half a million dollars to Equity PAC, whose purpose is to oppose the hiring of new officers.

Then you add another level of leftist power drunkenness: COVID-19 vaccine mandates. This has resulted in mass firings across several cities. Seattle could be losing up to 200 vaccine-hesitant cops. That’s roughly 20% of the police department. Seattle already lost 300 officers due to defund-the-police efforts and now it’s pushing out more officers with a vaccine mandate that goes into place on October 18.

The common thread in all of these cities is that they are mismanaged by leftist politicians and, not coincidentally, crime is rising at an alarming rate. But what about the midsized cities that are more bipartisan in their governing? Police Chief Howard Burton of Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, says that perhaps the lack of recruitment is a generational issue. “Many people just don’t want to help anymore,” he said. Even in midsize cities like Chattanooga, Tennessee, where there isn’t strong anti-law-enforcement sentiment, police departments are still struggling to recruit qualified candidates.

Between the poorly governed cities, social justice unrest, the defund-police movement, vaccine mandates, rising crime, and possibly a generational lack of caring, our country as a whole is facing a severe police shortage and the vicious cycle will continue if the culture war on police is not stopped.