Ga. law enforcement officials cite public distrust of police for hurting morale

Capitol Beat News Service

Deteriorating public support for law enforcement is driving police officers away from the profession and making it harder to attract new recruits, representatives of state and local police agencies said Thursday.

While cops expect criminals to see them in a negative light, bad feelings about the police are spreading to ordinary citizens and even elected officials, Butch Ayers, executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, told the state Senate Study

Committee on Law Enforcement Reform at its kickoff meeting.

“Officers are asking themselves, ‘Why am I staying here?’ ” Ayers said. “We cannot attract people to this noble profession if we continue to vilify the profession.”

Police officers in cities across America have been targets of violent elements of otherwise peaceful protests since the death of George Floyd last May, a Black man who died after a white police officer in Minneapolis kneeled on his neck.

In the most recent incident, two Louisville, Ky., police officers were shot and wounded Wednesday night hours after a grand jury indicted a former city police detective for wanton endangerment for allegedly shooting into the home of a neighbor of Breonna Taylor but did not charge any officers in the fatal shooting of Taylor.

“We have bad actors, but we do not systematically do wrong,” Terry Norris, executive director of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, told committee members. “We’re not the enemy.”

The Senate formed the study committee in June to consider whether state laws governing policing need to be changed.