They want you to suffer so that they can preen

From ‘Defund the Police’ Led to Lower Standards by Jason Johnson.  The subheading is Recruitment difficulties have reduced the quality of officers, increasing the risk of abusive conduct.

Heather Mac Donald has been making this argument as well (What Killed Tyre Nichols by Heather Mac Donald.)

The mainstream media has resisted acknowledging what has clearly happened.  There was a significant bump in crime after the Ferguson Riots in 2014 when police forces were stood down around the nation.  Or, more properly, police were constrained from regular police activities as a sop to violent activists.  

Violent crime ratcheted up further after the George Floyd riots in 2020.  Not only were police forces further constrained but police were threatened with defunding and with arrest for routine police activities.  

The increase in crime was across the nation but not nationwide.  It tended to be concentrated in jurisdictions where the political establishment were least supportive of police departments.  It didn't take actual monetary defunding.  All it took was the clear message that politicians would not support the police in whatever fashion.

The mainstream media works hard to deny that there is an increase in violent crime and are vociferous that it is not because of defunding. 

But crime is rising and political support for the police in many jurisdictions has evaporated.  

Both Johnson and Mac Donald are good with documenting the empirical reasons for this rise.  Police are retiring earlier and transferring out of non-supporting jurisdictions faster.  Recruiting is harder and slower.  Consequently, police ranks are thinned further because they are markedly understaffed.

Rising crime is a policy choice made by urban politicians and was entirely predicted and those predictions have been fulfilled and the mainstream media is just as befuddled at this turn of events as ever.  It is inconceivable to them and not part of their understanding of the world.  

Johnson does a very good job of tying the consequences of the political decline in support of the police to the recent tragedy in Memphis when five black officers viciously beat and injured a black motorist.  A case still under investigation.  But the dynamics are clear and highlight what is happening elsewhere.

By making a hard job harder. more dangerous and riskier, politicians have squeezed application pools.  Given that there are not enough qualified applicants, many departments are relaxing the critical standards they once had.  Standards which helped reduce police violence.

To fill vacancies, most large police agencies have lowered their standards. In 2020 Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown announced that certain applicants would no longer be required to obtain 60 college credits. The department received 400 applications the day of the announcement. Philadelphia dropped its residency and age requirements in 2017 and applications jumped 20%. But it didn’t work for long, as poor recruitment and high attrition have since returned to those departments.

The longer the staffing crisis goes on, the worse community-police tensions will become as faith in the competence and trustworthiness of law enforcement erodes. A four-year college degree may not be necessary to perform the duties of a police officer, but applicants with sketchy employment and education résumés are unlikely to possess the communication skills and self-control necessary to do well as cops. A history of drug and alcohol abuse or criminal activity has been shown to increase the risk that an officer will use excessive force or engage in serious misconduct on the job. Officers who are in poor physical shape can’t credibly protect the public from crime.

Demetrius Haley, one of the five officers involved in Nichols’s death, joined the Memphis Police Department in 2020 after the agency loosened its education requirements. Mr. Haley had previously worked as a Shelby County corrections officer and was sued in 2016 for allegedly beating a jail inmate. That case was dismissed on a technicality, but Mr. Haley was reprimanded by the Memphis Police Department after only six months on the job for not filing a report after using force during an arrest. Months later, he crashed a cruiser while responding to a police call. Three of the four other officers had also earned official reprimands during their short careers.

Memphis has been hiring questionable candidates since 2017-18, when it applied for six waivers to a Tennessee law preventing police departments from hiring recruits with criminal or drug histories. But the city lowered the bar further last year in a bid to get more recruits in the door. The college education and fitness requirements were watered down significantly.

Memphis isn’t alone. Other departments have relaxed standards. The Police Executive Research Forum has found that a majority of departments are accepting recruits who admit to having used illegal drugs. Visible tattoos were once a no-no, but a third of departments now allow them. And many departments are granting exemptions to rules against hiring applicants with criminal convictions.

The deprofessionalization of policing is a danger to public safety. Waiving or eliminating standards exacerbates the staffing problem by demoralizing veteran officers and turning off high-quality candidates. Excellence attracts excellence. Police officers who can’t handle the physical and ethical rigors of the job risk achieving through their actions what the “defund the police” movement never could by debasing the profession in the eyes of the American people.

Those who claim to want better and safer policing have, by their choices and actions, put everyone at greater risk and assured that there will be both more crime and more police violence.  That is their choice.