Law enforcement officers are resigning in droves. This time a Phoenix police officer resigned because of mandatory overtime during an ongoing staffing shortage, pushing him over the edge after what has already been a hard and stressful year for law enforcement.

Pushing Officer To Their Limits

According to KNXV, the Phoenix police department has 1,045 officers, 51 short of their minimum requirement of 1,096. Even though they have a budget for 3,000 personnel within the police department, there are only 2,770 currently on staff.

Phoenix currently does not have a limit set for the amount of overtime an officer can work. However, according to KNXV, the officers on duty have been pushed to their limits after being ordered to work many mandatory overtime shifts.

Officer Mark Rine was with the Phoenix police department for 14 years, but he resigned at the end of his shift when his dispatcher told him he would need to work overtime. In the recording, Rine told dispatch he would be checking off in four minutes, but dispatch responded that they were on "mandatory holdover until the calls go down."

This also meant she had no clue when he would be done. His supervisor confirmed and said, "If you can get out and answer some calls, I'd appreciate it." Rine informed dispatch that he would be filling out his resignation letter and promptly did just that.

Rine wrote, among other things, that he could not work in an environment where he had little sleep, little food, constant overtime, little respect from his Lieutenant, and constantly was picking up the slack on both ends of his shift. But, of course, Rine is not the only one who feels this way, and many of the officers are leaving the force because they do not feel any support from city leaders or the news media.