[FoxNews] Pile of old uniforms known as 'Mount Exodus' has grown at police department as cops resign.Resignations have continued piling up at the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department this year, setting off concerns from top law enforcement leaders.
"We’re reaching critical mass," St. Louis Police Officers Association President Jay Schroeder said this month of staffing issues on the city’s force.
About 819 officers have left the department since 2017, according to the St. Louis Police Pension Board. The department lost an average of 119 officers each year between 2017 and 2019. In 2020, 129 officers left the force, with an additional 174 leaving in 2021, according to the pension data.
St. Louis, which often ranks as one of the least safe cities in the country, joins a growing list of police departments across the country that are bleeding officers in recent years, most notably after calls to defund the police echoed across the nation in 2020.
Data provided to Fox News Digital by the St. Louis Police Department shows that, as of Tuesday, the force has 1,035 commissioned employees.
Police department data shows the number of authorized employees has fallen each year since 2020. There were a total of 1,205 commissioned employees at the start of 2020, 1,198 in January 2021, and 1,128 in January of this year.
Interim Police Chief Michael Sack sent an email to staff this month detailing the department has 811 police officers and detectives as of Oct. 3, down from the 905 police officers and detectives the force had at the beginning of October 2021.
"This puts a burden on us to perform our duties with fewer officers," he wrote, KSDK reported earlier this month. "We must pay attention to staffing in the line platoons and on squads. No squad should have fewer than five officers with the optimum number being seven officers. I wish I could give you more, but this is the reality."
At police headquarters, a pile of discarded uniforms known as "Mount Exodus" has also grown, KSDK reported. Outgoing cops have been putting their old uniforms on a pile that has grown higher than seven feet tall and 10 feet wide, and even blocks some surrounding doorways, the outlet reported.
There have been about 71 new hires in 2022, according to the outlet.
Despite concerns from law enforcement leadership in the area, Mayor Tishaura Jones said staffing levels at the department are sufficient, according to KSDK. She cited a 2020 study showing the city has more officers per capita compared to similar sized-cities, the outlet reported.
Jones, who was sworn in as mayor last year, campaigned on a safety policy of "putting the public back in public safety." Her campaign website states that "defunding the police does not mean abolishing the police," instead it means "restructuring the department and reallocating the budget to programs and resources that actually prevent crime."
Fox News Digital reached out to the mayor’s office for comment on the staffing levels but did not immediately receive a reply.
St. Louis is far from alone in reporting staffing shortages and an increase in resignations — cities across the country have reported more of the same.