Late last month, Paul discussed the possibility that lowered standards for police hiring, as ever in the name of DEI, contributed to the murder of Tyre Nichols. My friend Mike Rushford at the excellent blog Crime and Consequences has looked into this. His report is worth setting out in full:
On July 17, 2015 a white police officer [in Memphis, Tennessee] shot and killed 19-year-old Darrius Stewart, a black man with outstanding felony warrants, during a traffic stop. 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.
Mike draws the increasingly inescapable conclusion: “One of the consequences…was last month’s killing of Tyre Nichols.”
The article notes that, in the years immediately prior to Nichols’ gruesome beating death by five black officers:
“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. Such a unit should have been made up of the most seasoned and best trained officers throughout 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.”
It’s hard to imagine a more bitter irony than, in the name of “equity,” we now have police who don’t know right from wrong. Or if they do know it, lack the judgment and restraint to act on it.
Mike concludes:
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 [accused of] 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 [by years of Amerika’s racist oppression].
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.”
The question before our country in light of all this is whether, finally, we are going to understand that what matters in hiring, whether on police forces or university faculties, is performance and excellence not diversity and inclusion.
And the answer, as we all know, is no. No, at least until the morgues are a lot fuller and college graduates’ minds a lot emptier than they are even now.
Progressives are all about finding "root causes".
Bill and Mr.Rashford have laid out the root cause of the death Mr. Nichols- an eradication of reasonable, task required standards needed in police work- all in the name of the false flag of the pernicious DEI narrative.
This is all part of a plan to nationalize all police forces. Here is Obama calling for it.
“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
So ask yourself why? Well, the majority of police forces are part of the local community and would resist an attempt by the communist party U.S.A. aka the democrat party to suspend the constitution and enforce their edict’s. Look at all the sheriffs in blue states that are pushing back against gun control and other communist agenda items. A “police force” that is funded and run from Washington DC with officers who are from outside the community are far more likely to obey.