YOU CAN'T ABOLISH ME. I QUIT.

Campus Reform reported, last October, that oh-so-woke Portland State University couldn't just abolish its police.  "Plans to disarm Portland State campus police on hold after too many quit."  That's right, sometimes the only response to being disrespected by the university administration is to go Galt.

Campus Police Chief Willie Halliburton stated that in order for unarmed officers to be safe, the school would need two officers for every shift, which hasn’t been possible due to the retirement or resignation of several officers.

In a video message addressing the issue, Halliburton stated, “I am fully committed to transforming this police agency into a unit that will achieve these goals. We’ll do this without carrying weapons while on patrol.”

“When we announced last August that we will begin unarmed patrol sometime this fall, I knew it would be a challenging and ambitious timeline,” said Halliburton. “I had commitment from my officers and from the University.”

“Since then, staff turnover and administrative delays, those things have held up this process of making sure my officers can safely and legally fulfill their duties without firearms, and keeping this campus secure in the midst of ongoing unrest in Portland," he added.

You'd think that the woke mobs would recognize Portland State as more likely to be a safe space for brain-brothers than as a bastion of reaction, but apparently not.

Halliburton discussed the rioting in Portland on Oct. 11, when the windows of the Campus Public Safety Office were smashed: “On October 11th the Campus Public Safety Office was severely damaged, our officers and our staff inside were traumatized. For me, I take this personal, someone has to show what peace looks like. We cannot continue to fight aggression with aggression.”

Halliburton’s decision to disarm officers was announced in August as part of a holistic plan for campus safety. According to that plan, officers would be armed with tasers instead of firearms and would call Portland Police to respond to any incident involving a weapon.

Fine-sounding words, and yet the mob was not propitiated.

One week after PSU made the announcement to continue working toward disarming police, protesters broke windows at the Public Safety Office and two other campus buildings. Protesters were chanting Jason Washington during what was called a “direct action” march.

The story does not identify this Jason Washington, that's probably not relevant, anyway.

In the scheme of things, discontent among university police at an institution that exists to provide contingent faculty appointments for the reserve army of Ph.D.s might not be a particularly big deal.

When the discontent spreads to Chicago, perhaps that will concentrate minds.

The number of police officers retiring in Chicago and other cities has soared amid a chorus of anti-police rhetoric that’s become increasingly loud over the past year.

In Chicago, 560 officers retired in 2020 in a police department that had about 13,100 sworn officers as of March, records show. That’s about 15% more cops retiring than during the previous year, when the number of retirements rose by nearly 30%.

In New York City, 2,500 cops retired last year, nearly double the number in 2019, according to the New York Police Department, which has about 34,500 uniformed officers.

In Minneapolis, about 40 officers retired last year, and another 120 took leaves of absence.

That puts the commissioners and senior chiefs in a place where they must recognize what the core functions of their departments are.

“It’s serious,” said Michael Lappe, vice president of the board of trustees for the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago, which oversees police pensions. “A lot of these people aren’t retiring. They’re quitting.”

Minneapolis city officials are asking surrounding communities to place some of their officers on joint law enforcement teams in the face of the flood of departures. The Minneapolis Police Department also is curtailing some of the work it normally does.

“The bike cops and the community engagement has been done away with,” police spokesman John Elder said. “Our homeless missions were scrapped. Our 911 response and our investigations are the focus now.”

In Chicago, some cops say last summer’s riots and demonstrations, which saw Black Lives Matter community activists call for defunding the police, were demoralizing. They say it also didn’t help police morale that more than 1,000 officers have tested positive for the coronavirus.

What's worse, being thought of as non-essential and deplorable, or being called on to be essential, while being thought of as deplorable?  At the same time, will there be any of the people who might make nice with officers on bicycles or engage with Officer Friendly left in Chicago or Minneapolis?

John Catanzara, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police union, said he can’t see how the police department’s recruiting can keep pace with the retirements and pointed to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s latest budget, which eliminated 614 police vacancies.

“Even ones that aren’t eligible to collect a pension check — if you’ve got five years on and you’ve got other options, I can see officers exploring it,” Catanzara said. “And what is this city going to do? You literally just handed the keys to the criminals.

“They have just made policing in this city and state near-impossible,” the police union boss said. “They have given control to the criminals.”

That's unlikely to turn out well for the criminals.