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Memphis police academy significantly lowered standards in recent years [1]
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Date: 2023-03-13
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 five years of work experience 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 tweaked its physical fitness standards. According to The Post, these changes were ordered by Memphis mayor Jim Strickland and implemented by former police chief Michael Railings and current chief Cerelyn Davis.
Nine current and former academy recruiters, instructors and survivors told The Post that these changes, as well as others implemented by word-of-mouth, 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 percent 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 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 from having a cop who doesn’t know how to use his weapon. However, they were told to put the recruits through remedial training.
Moreover, it looks like 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 one 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. Still, you would have thought that such serious charges would be investigated. However, 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. That’s a sign of cops who can’t ramp their emotions down.
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. Was lowering hiring standards worth this? Not by a longshot.
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