iSteve commenter Twinkie asks about the Memphis police scandal in which five black cops beat a black motorists resisting arrest to death:
Less explored and more salient question here is the discipline rate of police officers by race. Blacks in other professions – law, medicine, etc. – are disproportionately sanctioned for misconduct, which confirms the notion of mismatch due to affirmative action. Does this also apply to law enforcement? I would think so, but I’d like to see the data.
Charles Murray’s 2021 book Two Truths features many examples of how black affirmative action hires tend to get in serious trouble for screwing up, just as The Bell Curve would predict.
The population of Memphis is 65% black while the police force is 58% black and the surrounding hinterlands are somewhat whiter. This high percentage of black cops suggests a fairly strong degree of affirmative action in Memphis Police Department hiring, maybe something like a 100 IQ for white applicants and an 88 IQ for black applicants.
I’ve always felt that affirmative action could be more reasonably be justified in police hiring than in just about any other field. As etymology would suggest, the police are inherently political. While 65% of Memphis residents are black, 93% of 2021’s known homicide offenders were black. Presumably, crime witnesses fall in between the two figures.
On the other hand, there is a definite price to be paid for police departments scraping the bottom of the barrel harder for black applicants, such as black cops screwing up more.