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As Democrat-run cities across America continue to descend into criminal chaos, the nation’s largest city is hemorrhaging police officers.

In an exclusive story last week, The New York Post published data that shows New York City (NYC) police officers are resigning from their duties at a shocking rate. Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch called it a “staffing emergency” that is “approaching the point of no return.”

The statistics show a 117% increase in retiring officers since 2021.

The shocking stats show 239 officers tapped out in January and February, a 36% spike from the 176 who fled in the same period last year and a disturbing 117% jump from the 110 in 2021, NYPD pension data show.

That’s the highest number of resignations for the first two months of a year since 250 members quit in 2007 during a contentious contract dispute.

According to the report, there seem to be a number of converging factors contributing to the massive loss of personnel in the Big Apple.

The Black Lives Matter-led movement to defund police departments across the country has almost certainly created a combination of shrinking budgets to retain employees and a strain on remaining resources. However, corruption and poor management also seems to be a debilitating issue.

A veteran Manhattan police officer told the Post that precinct cops have to work “an inhumane amount of overtime” that often includes their days off. At the same time, they are penalized by department bureaucrats for small breaches of uniform and/or administrative protocol. Meanwhile, some officers are being protected from necessary patrol duties by “high-ranking supervisors.”

The Manhattan cop said the department simply “doesn’t know how to manage personnel.

“Hundreds of cops are being hidden under fake assignments or assigned to headquarters sitting at a desk all day and are considered ‘untouchable’ for patrol or enforcement duty because they have high-ranking supervisors protecting them,” he seethed.

NYPD officers are fleeing to places like Florida, or suburban locations in New York and Connecticut. As the cost of living in NYC sky-rockets, pay remains stagnant. There is also the rapidly declining quality of life. Prolonged school closures, COVID vaccine mandates and unnecessary masking of small children has led to a learning crisis in government schools. A notoriously ‘woke’ agenda in those same schools has also begun to affect testing levels and education outcomes. Rampant homelessness and open-air drug use make for unsafe streets and public transportation.

Police officers have families like everyone else. It is becoming an increasingly risky proposition to raise a young family in NYC and its five boroughs, particularly in Manhattan. Many NYPD employees are opting for more financial security with less personal risk, a pattern that seems to be affecting all types of Americans these days.

In the past two years nearly half a million residents have fled the high-crime, high-cost state of California for greener pastures. Likewise, New York state has lost hundreds of thousands of residents to Florida.

According the report from The New York Post, 262 city cops retired in just the first two months of 2023, a 3% increase in retirements in the same time period last year. Perhaps the most alarming number uncovered in the report reveals that the NYPD lost 3701 officers in 2022 alone. It is the largest number of officers lost since 2002, following the 9/11 attacks. That year the city lost 3,846 police officers.

Things don’t seem to be looking up any time soon.

The NYPD’s 33,822 uniformed cops are already 1,208 below the budgeted headcount, documents show, and 2,467 cops short of the 36,289 roster at the start of 2020.

America’s cities are crumbling under the weight of corrupt, nonsensical Democrat policies. Democrat voters seemed fixed on their insane voting preferences, but even still, it is clear the most important vote is the one people make with their feet. The last line of defense against a crumbling urban infrastructure for law-abiding taxpayers is their peace officers. Americans depend on those men and women to keep their commutes to work and school safe and protect their neighborhoods and businesses. When the police are stripped of the resources and the personal drive to perform their duties effectively, the last thing standing between maintaining a functioning city and utter chaos will cease to exist.

“At this rate, keeping everyone safe will be an Herculean task,” said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

“The only people that are happy are the cop haters, activists and defunders.”