When news broke about how Tyre Nichols died—or, more accurately, was murdered—at the hands of five Memphis police officers, it seemed it would only be a matter of time before it emerged that at least some of those cops probably shouldn’t have been hired in the first place. After all, the footage of Nichols’ beating isn’t that of a police interaction, it’s of someone being jumped by a street gang as it was clear he wasn’t resisting.
According to The Washington Post, in the years prior to Nichols’ death, the Memphis Police Department lowered the standards at its training academy in hopes of filling a rash of vacancies. In the process, it created a situation where bad and outright dangerous cops would eventually wind up on the force.
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Starting in 2014, the department was hit with a one-two punch. Dozens of officers quit and applications tailed off in the wake of a cut in pension benefits and a series of high-profile cases of police misconduct. In response, starting in 2018, the department began allowing potential recruits to have two years of work experience (and that means any work experience, not experience specific to law enforcement) if they only had a high school diploma, provided they get an associate degree within four years of hiring. Previously, potential recruits had to have either an associate degree or 54 hours of college credit. In 2022, the academy dropped timing requirements on fitness drills and eliminated running qualifications entirely because too many people were failing, according to 6 South Florida. According to The Post, these changes were ordered by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and implemented by the former police chief, Michael Rallings, and the current chief, Cerelyn Davis.
Nine academy recruiters and instructors, both current and former, told The Post that these changes, as well as others, were a disaster waiting to happen.
The academy became more lenient in grading, and students were allowed more chances to retake exams — including at the shooting range — after failures that would have led to dismissal under previous rules, the current and former officers said. Incidents of cheating did not always trigger dismissal, as in the past, four officers said. Struggling students were invited to study sessions in which they were taught upcoming test material straight from exam books.
One of those officers, retired police lieutenant James Lash, recalled that he and his colleagues had been worried about a number of Nichols’ killers when they were still in the academy. As he put it, “You reap what you sow.”
The current and former officers recalled that problems actually began as early as the academy’s 123rd session, in 2017. It contained 110 recruits, almost four times the size of the 122nd session. However, so many of the recruits left much to be desired that instructors gave up any hope of beating the 122nd session’s 79% graduation rate. And yet, 85 recruits graduated—a sign at how low the bar had already fallen. Among the graduates in that class was Desmond Mills Jr., one of Nichols’ killers.
Another graduate was Jamarcus Jeames, who was allowed to graduate despite allegedly sexually harassing an instructor and failing to tell instructors about being detained by a Shelby County deputy after falling asleep late at night outside a restaurant. A year into his career, Jeames turned off his body camera and in-car camera before shooting a man who fled from a traffic stop with a gun. While the shooting was ultimately ruled justified, Jeames resigned after investigators faulted him for violating numerous department policies.
According to the former Memphis officers, the police academy disregarded its own policy manual in an effort to keep its graduation rates up. Students got away with flunking multiple exams, and inquiries about cheating on written exams and timed physical fitness tests disappeared into the ether. According to former training supervisor Brian McNamee, instructors fell all over themselves to help recruits pass tests. McNamee put it bluntly: “If somebody can’t pass the tests and can’t grasp the material, you don’t want them on the streets policing you.”
Apparently that coddling extended to one of the red lines of police training—firearms proficiency. In 2021, three recruits in the 135th session flunked their final shooting exams. Normally, that was grounds for dismissal, given the astronomical legal liability of having a cop who doesn’t know how to use his weapon. However, they were told to put the recruits through remedial training.
Moreover, the standards for even getting into the academy have been lowered to alarming levels. When Alvin Davis was transferred to the academy recruiting unit in 2021, he was stunned to see how low the standards had fallen from his days as an instructor. In particular, he was stunned at a longstanding practice of not formally interviewing recruits:
“They said it was too time-consuming to do an interview,” said Davis, who retired last year, “so instead of taking the time, you end up hiring these five knuckleheads who might have told you they wanted to be police so they could beat people up.”
McNamee agreed, recalling that the department doesn’t expend enough resources in checking recruits’ backgrounds. For example, another of Nichols’ killers, Demetrius Haley, joined the police after serving as a Shelby County corrections officer. In 2015, an inmate accused Haley of beating him unconscious. The inmate sued, but the suit was dropped because documents weren’t served properly. Neither the Memphis Police nor the Shelby County Corrections Department provided any details.
Another retired officer, Chester Striplin, recalled a trend in a number of recent graduates that is especially relevant to what we saw in the videos of Nichols’ death.
“They don’t know how to go from zero to a scale of five. They’re always at one of two levels — either zero or 10,” Striplin said of newly trained officers. “And you found that they weren’t able to articulate when to de-escalate the situation that they were in. The supervisors had to be called a lot more than ever before.”
Remember, these cops kept whaling away at Nichols even when it was clear he wasn’t resisting. And SCORPION, which was the high-crime task force responsible for Nichols’ arrest and death, was allegedly full of inexperienced officers:
Many young officers, before ever walking a beat with more experienced colleagues, found themselves thrust into specialized units like the now-disbanded SCORPION high-crime strike force involved in Nichols’ arrest. 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.”
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Of the five SCORPION team officers now charged with second-degree murder in Nichols’ Jan. 7 beating, two had only a couple of years on the force and none had more than six years’ experience.
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“Why would you have an elite task force that you know is designed for aggressive policing and you don’t cover your bases? They may have to shoot someone. They may have to kick someone’s door down. They may have to physically restrain someone,” [Michael] Williams [former head of the Memphis Police Association, the officers' union] said. “You should have experienced people around to restrain them and keep them from going down a dark path.”
The Justice Department is reviewing the Memphis Police’s training practices as part of its broader review of the department. Plus, it’s all but certain that the city will have to pay Nichols’ family millions in settlements.
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