Report: Memphis Police Officers Involved In Nichols Beating Hired After Dept. Lowered Standards: Report

Report: Memphis Police Officers Involved In Nichols Beating Hired After Dept. Lowered Standards: Report


A report over the weekend claimed that some of the five Memphis police officers involved in beating Tyre Nichols earlier this month were all hired after the department lowered its standards.

Nichols succumbed to his injuries and died on Jan. 10, three days after he was pulled over for a traffic stop, according to local media. All of those involved — Nichols and the five officers who now stand accused of murdering him — are black.

The Daily Wire reports:

Officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmit Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith have all been charged with two counts of official misconduct, local media reported, with one count of official oppression, second-degree murder, aggravated assault-act in concert, and two counts of aggravated kidnapping. The New York Post reported that Bean and Haley joined the Memphis Police Department during the summer of 2020 as riots related to the death of George Floyd rocked the nation.

Bean and Haley’s hiring by the department in August 2020 came two years after the department significantly lowered the education required to join the force.

The lowered standards meant that police recruits were no longer required to have an associate’s degree or 54 college credit hours in order to join the force, according to The Post, and instead could supplant the education requirement with on-the-job experience. But the outlet said experts who spoke on the record said the lowered requirements meant that “less desirable” candidates were being hired by the department.

“A LinkedIn post by law enforcement official Karan Parmar claimed that sources inside the department said that the officers were not hired through the normal process that the department had implemented,” the Daily Wire noted.

“According to a source within the Memphis PD, the 5 charged officers weren’t hired through the usual structured PD hiring process,” Parmar said. “City leaders felt the existing process was too strict and kept certain people from getting jobs at the department. City leaders began their own hiring process and then pushed new hires into the agency, bypassing the testing procedures in place at the department. You can read between the lines what that all means.”

“All 5 of the charged officers were hired by the City, and didn’t go through the rigorous PD testing process,” the statement continued. “This is what quota hiring looks like. Lawsuits and dead innocents. The city should pay (sic) the lawsuits instead of the Police department. This Murder wasn’t created by old school policing or by ‘white supremacy’. This murder was directly facilitated by liberal policy.”


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