The Consequences of Politically-Correct Police Recruitment

On July 17, 2015 a white police officer shot and killed 19-year-old Darrius Stewart, a black man with outstanding felony warrants, during a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee.  The incident was captured on video and made national headlines sparking protests with charges of police racism.  Both the Obama Justice Department and a Memphis Grand Jury declined to charge the officer in the face of evidence that Stewart had attacked the officer before attempting to escape.  In spite of this, the racist stain on the Memphis Police Department resulted in significant changes in the recruitment and training of officers.  Bernard Condon, Jim Mustain and Adrian Sainz of the Associated Press report that these changes included lowering the standards for experience, education and even ignoring prior criminal behavior, in order to recruit more officers.  While the reporters are careful not to say it, these changes were made to put more officers of color on the force.  One of the consequences of this was last month’s killing of Tyre Nichols.

In the years immediately prior to the beating death of Nichols by a group of black officers the article noted:

“They would allow just pretty much anybody to be a police officer because they just want these numbers,” said Alvin Davis, a former lieutenant in charge of recruiting before he retired last year out of frustration. “They’re not ready for it.”

The department offered new recruits $15,000 signing bonuses and $10,000 relocation allowances while phasing out requirements to have either college credits, military service or previous police work. All that’s now required is two years’ work experience — any work experience. The department also sought state waivers to hire applicants with criminal records. And the police academy even dropped timing requirements on physical fitness drills and removed running entirely because too many people were failing.

“I asked them what made you want to be the police and they’ll be honest — they’ll tell you it’s strictly about the money,” Davis said, adding that many recruits would ask the minimum time they would actually have to serve to keep the bonus money. “It’s not a career for them like it was to us. It’s just a job.”

At least two of the officers involved in the Tyre Nichols beating had criminal records that were overlooked in order to recruit them.  Even worse, the officers serving on the Scorpion strike-force, an elite unit established to pro-actively go after the worst criminals, were inexperienced and poorly trained.  The most experienced officer in the unit had six years in service.  Others had less experience.   Such a unit should have been made up of the most seasoned and best trained officers in the department.

“Their lack of experience was shocking to veterans, who said some young officers who transfer back to patrol don’t even know how to write a traffic ticket or respond to a domestic call.

“They don’t know a felony from a misdemeanor,” Davis said. “They don’t even know right from wrong yet.”

What happened to the Memphis Police Department has been happening in other urban police departments across the country.  The effort by race-baiting activists to paint police departments and the entire criminal justice system as “systemically racist” was launched decades ago and advanced by the mainstream press.  It got major traction after Barack Obama was elected and appointed race-obsessed Eric Holder as Attorney General.  With 50% of all homicides committed by blacks, and most violent crimes occurring in black neighborhoods, police departments trying to give minority neighborhoods more protection were charged with over-policing and forced by the DOJ into consent decrees requiring them to prove that they were not racist.

In such an environment, It was only a matter of time before the alleged killing of an unarmed black man by a white officer was elevated into a nationwide war against the police.  The death of George Floyd provided Black Lives Matter and its Antifa shock troops with the excuse to tear up over 400 cities, attack and kill police officers and bystanders, while the public was told by the national media and political leaders that their actions were justified.

The killing of Tyre Nichols was not because he was black.  It was the result of dumbing down the hiring standards of the Memphis police department to allow unqualified, undisciplined, poorly trained and unethical people to wear the uniform in order to make the department “look like the community.”