What Happens When You Lower Standards and Make Work Unbearable?

The first thing that happens is you get a bunch of lower-performing people for the job. In this case, the job is working as a Chicago Cop. Young Chicago cops are being arrested or killed at alarming rates amid department's staffing crisis - Chicago Sun-Times

Seventeen cops hired since 2016 have been arrested and washed out of the police department, the Chicago Sun-Times found. Twenty-one more young officers have died, including seven killed in the line of duty and two others who were fatally shot.

Young cops have always died, that's why they partnered them with veterans. To teach them the ropes. But for cops to be arrested at this rate, something's changed.

64 recruits and officers hired since 2016 the Chicago Sun-Times identified as having been axed by the Chicago Police Department.

Twenty-five other early career cops have resigned while under investigation or quit to avoid being fired. Despite their disciplinary issues, 19 are now working for other police agencies across the state, according to state records.

So that's what happens when you change the selection criteria. When you make the job unbearable, people quit. Chicago Police Department exodus: New cops are leaving in droves, Sun-Times investigation finds.

One of every six Chicago cops hired since 2016 is no longer on the payroll. About 950 of the more than 5,750 people hired in that period have left. Their average time with the department? Not even three years. Many moved to suburban police departments.

The current and the most immediate past mayors of Chicago have been outright hostile to cops. Now I'm no apologist for Chicago PD, but the current oversight regime is biased against cops. They don't even hide it. And so people leave. Florida has been actively recruiting cops from Chicago. Better pay, better cost of living, better working environment.

As young Chicago police officers head for the exits, more and more veterans have been retiring in recent years, often before they reach their full pension status, a trend that’s been widely reported.

They can't keep the people being recruited, and the old-timers have had enough.

The hat tip for these 2 stories goes to Second City Cop: Manpower Crisis?

Who could have seen this coming?

(besides an "insignificant" blog, run by coppers, who were sounding the alarm on this over a decade ago....why would anyone listen to people working within the system for almost three decades?)

Click thru for some comments on changes in the recruiting criteria and what the problems are. In brief. SCC is always brief.