Chicago police ‘brain drain’? Retirements have stabilized, but 660 cops retired in 2021, almost twice as many as in 2018

“You can find evidence that in police departments across the country is that when there is pressure to recruit, they loosen up sometimes, and then later, they’ll call a blue-ribbon panel together to say, ‘Hey, what happened here? How do we have this corruption in the particular city or how did we have this misconduct come about?’” Malinowski said. “And oftentimes, when they deconstruct it, they’ll say, ‘Well, some of these folks came in during a period of time when we, admittedly, maybe needed you, but we had to loosen up the standards or weaken backgrounds.’”