Lowered police standards, diversity, and shortages

In 2015, Seattle University had a panel discussion about race and policing. The panel featured conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and left-wing cultural critic Charles Mudede.

Shapiro stated that overzealous policing has a cost and a benefit. Unfortunately, the victims of overzealous policing bear the cost, but the cost doesn’t outweigh the benefit. Mudede dismissed Shapiro’s cost-benefit analysis and stated right-wingers reject affirmative action out of fear of Black incompetency, but the incompetence of White police officers was never mentioned.

Mudede’s attempt to expose that double standard fell on deaf ears.

However, in 2017, Dr. Alfred S. Titus Jr., a retired New York police detective and law enforcement consultant, wrote, “Once again, [there is] a proposal to lower police hiring requirements in attempts to increase the candidate pool in cities that are suffering in the area of police recruitment. In the latest attempt to raise recruitment, some cities and police departments are considering accepting candidates with minor drug and criminal offenses to become police officers … The fact that this is being considered reveals to me that either this discussion does not include police or is being decided by persons who have no knowledge [of] what it means to wear the police uniform.”

J. Pharoah Doss Check