As South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg commands national attention with his media-savvy presidential bid, the firestorm back home over an officer-involved shooting shows no sign of settling soon — with the mayor facing criticism not only from protesters but police who say his handling has crushed morale and risks a “mass exodus” from the force.
“Morale around here has been terrible. We do nothing,” one police officer, a 20-year veteran of the force, told Fox News. “We call ourselves firemen, we sit around in parking lots until we’re called and then we go to the call, because if you say or do something wrong, then you get hung.”
“At an all-time low,” another officer said of morale. “It’s been really demoralizing and hard to come to work lately.”
Officers requested not to be identified for this story in fear of retaliation by the mayor’s administration. But they told Fox News that they know of multiple officers who are considering handing in their badges or taking retirement if eligible, in response to the mayor’s handling of the shooting.
“That’s the big discussion … is who’s staying and who’s going. I think you’re going to see a mass exodus, our administration is a joke,” one officer said.
South Bend Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) President Harvey Mills told Fox News that he has spoken to five or six officers who are “seriously” considering retiring or resigning because of the administration’s handling of the shooting. One officer told Fox News that he believes as many as 10 people will quit in the next year, and said he has also considered stepping away.
“It’s very discouraging that something I’ve always wanted to do, that God called me to do, that I’m questioning that and wondering, thinking about not being a police officer strictly because of politics and things that are going on that are completely out of my control,” he said.
Buttigieg has long had a strained relationship with the officers in South Bend, but that relationship has deteriorated considerably since the shooting death of Eric Logan — who is black — by white officer Sgt. Ryan O’ Neill.
According to investigators, O’Neill was called to a report of someone breaking into cars and encountered Logan, who was allegedly carrying a knife. According to authorities, O’Neill shot Logan after he approached him with the knife and ignored repeated demands to drop it, the South Bend Tribune reported.
But O’Neill’s body camera was not on to confirm his account, and skeptics of the department’s account have blasted city officials, fueling a firestorm that repeatedly has pulled Buttigieg off the trail to deal with the crisis back home.
O’Neill resigned last week, with the FOP saying in a statement that “job related stress, the lawsuit, national media attention, and hateful things said on social media have been difficult for O’Neill and his young family.”