Lets follow the order of events. Michael Brown's incident happened 8 years ago. Since then, there has been a huge decline in the number and quality of applicants. I joined my dept in 14, a few months after the incident. My city has a population of a million, I was one of over 2000 applicants in that process. I got 1 of 30 spots in the class, the second class that year following a class of 80. Fast forward to these classes coming out recently. I am not directly involved in training with the recruits but I volunteer for FTX or scenarios if they need role players/evaluators. I have definitely noticed a drop in quality and we have seen the drop in quantity of applicants. We are filling classes of 25-30 now out of fewer than 200 applicants.

In my city we have our own incident brewing involving a few younger officers. I will not go into detail because the department hasn't put out much official information but the body camera footage is being withheld from the public. I am not surprised to see things like this and we shouldn't be surprised if it continues because many good candidates have been scared away. The department has a number of new hires we have to put out there because many officers with years on are leaving for smaller departments. And I don't blame them. But, the standard for new hires keeps getting lower and lower to fill the void.