How US can become 'law enforcement-minded country' after defund police effect: former ICE official

A veteran law enforcement officer shared why police departments across the country are in a workforce crisis and why a lack of support from government officials is contributing to officers "leaving in droves."

Former senior U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) official John Fabbricatore, who served 30 years in law enforcement, told Fox News Digital that police departments are facing a lack of recruitment and retention in recent years.

"What I'm seeing right now is the impact of law hiring," he said. "It is very, very difficult to get new officers on board. We have had a lot of law enforcement officers leaving, which increases the workload for the existing officers, which puts a strain on the community."

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Police officers intervene as pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 25, 2024.  (Bryan Dozier/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Fabbricatore said that the lack of retention has contributed to morale problems and mental health challenges that many in the community deal with.

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"When officers are working extended hours, they are forced to go to do overtime, forced to work on, on their days off and that just leads to more problems," he said. "So it really leads to a big retention problem in the law enforcement community."

A demonstrator confronts police as they march through the streets of downtown Chicago to protest the police killing of Sonya Massey on July 27, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois.  (im Vondruska/Getty Images))

He also shared the negative impact of movements like "Abolish ICE" and "defund the police" have 

"Being with ICE, we saw officers leaving in droves," Fabbricatore said. "They were leaving because of how ICE [officers] were treated in the whole Abolish ICE movement."

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"And there are a lot of left-leaning DA's [district attorneys] who are just dropping charges and dropping cases. And officers are working their butts off to move these cases forward – only to have them dropped," he said.  "Who really wants to now work in law enforcement these days?"

Chicago police officers work with an ambulance as the Chicago Police Department trains at McCormick Place, June 6, 2024, in preparation for the Democratic National Convention. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

The veteran law enforcement officer said media coverage has also played a role.

"The media looks at a situation, and they're looking at it in a certain way and reporting it in a certain way, but they're not looking at it with the training that the officer has received," he said. "I think the media needs to become a little bit better at looking at the overall situation."

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"In most situations, the officer is trying to make the best of the situation. They're going into this situation with very little information originally, and they're trying to make the best that they can out of this situation where the media comes in days later or hours later, and they look at it way differently, because they have more information than the officer had when that officer arrived at the scene," Fabbricatore said.

Officer Chatelle Ogea, 36, of Omaha, center, takes a knife out of a young mans pocket during a search before questioning him.  (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Fabbricatore reiterated the need to support law enforcement and the need to enforce the laws of the country.

"We have to get back to being an honorable law enforcement-minded country," he said. "The way to do that is to enforce laws as they are written and not have DA's come in and dropping charges and letting criminals back onto the streets."

"It's hard enough to be a law enforcement officer, but when you go into a situation when you're not sure that your command is going to back you up or that the media is going to back you up, it becomes very difficult."

The U.S. Capitol Police boosted its presence around Capitol Hill following the indictment of former President Trump in March 2024. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that police hiring ticked upward in 2023 for the first time in five years, citing a survey from PERF, a nonprofit policing think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Those gains came mainly in small- and medium-sized departments. Big cities were still below staffing levels they maintained prior to the 2020 "defund the police" riots.

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Early resignations also declined, although they remained above 2020 levels.