Relaxed hiring opened Memphis police to candidates that otherwise may not have been hired

A new report by The New York Post shows that two of the five police officers charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols were hired by the Memphis Police Department after it relaxed its hiring requirements.
Tadarrius Bean and Demetrius Haley both joined the MPD in August 2020 after the education qualifications to become an officer were dramatically lowered two years prior. Due to a lack of applicants, the department nixed the required associate’s degree or 54 college credit hours for recruits in 2018.
”They are desperate. “The want police officers,” retired NYPD detective Mike Alcazar told the Post. “After completing the necessary requirements, they are approved and allowed to proceed.”
The department was so desperate for recruits that it offered $15,000 signing bonuses in both 2021 and 2022, and waivers for applicants who had been convicted of felonies. The force being down 500 officers in January 2022, even this did not prevent it.
Former Deputy Director of MPD Mike Ryall told the Memphis Commercial Appeal in October 2020 that the rise of violent crime in the city, which had occurred the previous month, could be attributed to the police department’s understaffing and lack of manpower.
Black Lives Matter organized the global protest movement in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Bean and Haley were also hired during the summer of the riots. More than 25 people were killed and over $1 billion in property damage occurred as the protests spread to more than 2,000 cities across America. The movement’s main mantra, “defund the police,” significantly damaged police morale.
The rate of retirement at police departments increased by 45% in 2020, compared to the previous year, according to a June 2021 survey by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). This is accompanied by a 20% increase in resignations. The hiring rate also decreased by 5%.
In other words, police officers were quitting at unprecedented rates across the country because they felt it was a hostile environment, and departments were struggling to meet minimum staffing requirements. A massive crime wave across America’s major cities coincided with this.
In an interview with news sources, Chuck Wexler, the Executive Director of PERF, stated that the police workforce is shrinking due to an unprecedented number of retirements and resignations, at a time when the public is hoping for more police to help deal with crime.
The Black Lives Matter movement and leftist elites have cultivated disastrous dynamics that have led to a shortage of recruits for the police force. Stoking fears of racism and hatred yields a lot of power and money. Most especially black Americans like Nichols are at the cost of safety of the American public.
It is important to remember why officers of that quality were hired to those positions in the first place, but for sure, let the cops implicated in Nichols’ death be charged to the fullest extent of the law.