Joe Sarria couldn't take it anymore.

He turned in his Atlanta police gun and badge in April and moved to Florida, no longer caring about his job and fed up with the department.

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"There came a time when I stopped trying," said Sarria, 34, now an officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. "I'd just go through the motions."

After the Atlanta Police Department froze 53 vacant positions last month — a byproduct of the city's budget crisis — retaining officers is now more important than ever. But a recent audit by the city, made public July 29, revealed that Atlanta police are losing an increasing number of officers, most of whom have five years on the job or less. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, though an Open Records Act request, obtained 61 exit interview surveys filled out by departing officers between July 2007 and July 2008 to find out why they are going elsewhere.

The newspaper analyzed 32 of the surveys that were filled out by sworn police officers.

Not included in the analysis were surveys completed by 26 recruits who left the department before becoming officers. Officers who leave are not required to fill out the survey.

A request to interview Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington for this story was denied. Instead, one of the department's three deputy chiefs, George Turner, conducted an interview with the AJC.

Turner, who has been with the department for 28 years, acknowledged that officers leaving the Police Department has been an issue "as long as I can remember."

"We lose officers, and we're not debating that," Turner said.

Turner, however, said rising officer turnover is a national trend in law enforcement and a study several years ago showed that Atlanta wasn't losing more officers than similar cities.

The city's audit reported, though, that Atlanta police officials consider its attrition rates a "serious problem."

The Atlanta Police Department's attrition levels for officers who were not retiring has risen from 4.6 percent in 2004 to 6.2 percent in 2007, according to the audit. During those years, Atlanta police lost 585 officers and recruits — an average of about 150 per year.

The city could not find a benchmark to compare Atlanta's numbers, but the percentages are higher than the police department's expected attrition rate of 3 percent.

Dissatisfaction with pay ranks high

The biggest gripe for Atlanta's departing officers?

Survey says: Money.

Of the 32 sworn officers who completed surveys, 44 percent listed "dissatisfaction with pay" as one of their reasons for leaving.

Later in the survey, when officers were asked what they liked the least about their jobs, 56 percent listed "pay."

The starting salary for officers — between $39,000 and $42,000 a year — ranks at the top among police agencies in metro Atlanta.

DeKalb County police officers start out between $36,800 and $38,700, compared with $38,300 in Cobb County and $35,000 in Gwinnett County.

Annual raises, called "step" raises, are the problem, according to Atlanta police union president, Sgt. Scott Kreher and other police officials.

The city of Atlanta has frozen those raises numerous times in recent years while officers at neighboring police agencies watch their salaries grow from year to year.

As a result, the department's morale has taken a hit, especially when officers are hired from other departments at higher salaries than their Atlanta police supervisors are making, Kreher said.

"As a [sergeant] with four frozen pay steps," Sgt. Matthew Ramarge wrote in his survey, "I would be making less money than some of the people I was supervising with more responsibility."

Though they were in the minority, there were some officers who wrote that they enjoyed their time as an Atlanta police officer.

Tim Molnar, 26, rated the department as a "good" place to work in his survey.

"I loved it there," said Molnar, who moved back to Buffalo, New York, in October 2007 with his wife to be closer to family. "The officers down there were great people."

When reached by phone, Molnar said he left college to join the department in 2004 — his first real job. He said he knew how much money he was going to make and that was just fine with him.

"I was mostly there to get experience," said Molnar, who is working security for high schools in Buffalo, hoping to get back into law enforcement.

When officers were asked what they liked most about the department, 63 percent gave the same answer: their co-workers.

Deputy chief disputes some gripes

Officers cited three main reasons that they originally joined the department: for training and development opportunities, because the job seemed interesting and for career advancement, in that order.

Aside from pay, two complaints tied as the second-most popular response to what officers liked the least about their jobs: unorganized work processes and poor equipment.

One officer, who opted not to put his or her name on the survey, wrote that "one of the fallbacks is the lack of communication and teamwork between various sections and the patrol officers,"

Nearly one-third of the officers also took exception with the Police Department's equipment.

"Officers are fighting tomorrow's war with yesterdays (sic) equipment," the anonymous officer wrote, adding that crime-scene tape, fingerprint kits and office supplies including pens and notebooks are hard to come by.

Deputy Chief Turner disagreed with both claims, saying that different shifts and divisions meet weekly "to talk about what's going on. There are mutual conversations going back and forth across those lines."

Turner also contended that the department is not hurting for equipment and supplies.

"If supplies are not available, I don't know why officers are not getting them," he said. "We haven't had any problems with our vendors."

Officer Peter Lindberg, a former Detroit police officer, wrote that Atlanta's focus on crime statistics — police officials discuss them at weekly meetings — has sacrificed good police work in favor of pumping up arrest numbers. Similar accusations were tossed around after the illegal police shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in 2006.

"Being a good police officer in Detroit was about working and then making good cases to better serve the community," Lindberg said. "The message I have received here in Atlanta is that we are here to boost statistics for the purpose of satisfying the power structure. ..."

Turner said the department is not overly focused on crime statistics and added that they "can be used as an evaluation tool to measure our effectiveness in reducing crime."

The deputy chief also said the department has made several changes in recent years to attract — and hold on to — officers that put on the Atlanta police uniform.

Officers can now get promoted sooner, get money for college tuition, are vested in the city's pension plan sooner and get a $3,000 bonus after their fifth year as long as they agree to stay on for three more years.

None of that matters to former Atlanta officer Sarria now.

He started his new job as a police officer in Jacksonville three months ago and said he couldn't be happier.

"I actually want to work now," he said. "The officers here go out and love their job. If you feel appreciated, you do a much better job."

— Data analyst Megan Clarke and news researchers Sharon Gaus and Richard Hallman contributed to this report.