The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

Let’s begin by summarizing salient facts about the horrific beating in Memphis of a 29-year-old father with no criminal history, who succumbed to his brutal injuries three days later:

We had five black police officers under the command of a black police chief, in a majority-black city with a violent crime rate, beat a young black man to death, and as to be expected, honest people looked for honest answers about why it happened. Yet, the so-called “mainstream” media predictably jumped the shark with a ridiculous assertion that racism was to blame for the brutal killing. That is not only absurd; it’s intentionally ignorant, troubling on multiple levels, and potentially dangerous on its flame-fanning face.

As to the “racism” charge, CNN’s resident race-hustler Van Jones absurdly explained (emphasis, mine):

At the end of the day, it is the race of the victim who is brutalized — not the race of the violent cop — that is most relevant in determining whether racial bias is a factor in police violence.

It’s hard to imagine five cops of any color beating a White person to death under similar circumstances. And it is almost impossible to imagine five Black cops giving a White arrestee the kind of beat-down that Nichols allegedly received.

Fine, Van (stay with me), so if the victim was white and the violent cops were black, would that attack have been racist, as well? Not a chance in hell; Jones and other race-baiters like him would’ve “rationalized” it away in a hypocritical heartbeat.

Quintessential left-wing logic: cover all your bases so you can label virtually anything “racist,” which is not dissimilar to climate loons moving from “global warming” to “climate change,” thus allowing them to falsely label any weather condition or event (hot, cold, or temperate), not only “climate change,” but anthropomorphic climate change, to boot.

Moving on from Van Jones and other like-minded propagandists, and back to honest explanations, as I suggested at the top; what other factors should be considered in an attempt to explain the underlying causes of the tragic beating death of Tyre Nichols?

As NBC News reported on Friday, two of the five former police officers — Tadarrius Bean and Demetrius Haley — joined the Memphis Police Department in Aug. 2020, more than two years after the department dramatically loosened hiring requirements for officer trainees.

According to JoinMPD.com, the department’s previous requirements included two years of cumulative active military service with an honorable discharge, and an associate’s degree or 54 semester hours of college. Today, a new recruit can instead have just five years of “full-time, responsible, verifiable work experience,” and a high school diploma. If a recruit is hired under that qualification, he or she must obtain an associate degree within four years of employment.

The lowered highering requirements have had a dramatic impact on the Memphis Police Department, as reported by the New York Post. Mike Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a retired NYPD detective, told the NY Post the department is getting “less desirable” job candidates.

They’re desperate. They want police officers. They’re going through it, they check off some boxes, saying, ‘Ok, they’re good enough,’ get them on.

Here’s more on the lowering of the Memphis PD’s requirements, as reported by investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield for Front Page Magazine:

According to a source within the Memphis PD, the 5 charged officers weren’t hired through the usual structured PD hiring process. City leaders felt the existing process was too strict and kept certain people from getting jobs at the department.

City leaders began their own hiring process and then pushed new hires into the agency, bypassing the testing procedures in place at the department. You can read between the lines what that all means.

All 5 of the charged officers were hired by the City, and didn’t go through the rigorous PD testing process.

This is what quota hiring looks like. Lawsuits and dead innocents. The city should pay the lawsuits instead of the Police department. This Murder wasn’t created by old-school policing or by “white supremacy”. This murder was directly facilitated by liberal policy.

“Quota hiring.” Exactly. Or, the soft bigotry of low expectations, as it were.

Now, can the beating death of Tyre Nichols be blamed solely, if at all, on lowered department hiring requirements?

No, but it also can’t be ruled out as a contributing factor. As Greenfield noted, Betsy Brantner Smith, a retired police sergeant and trainer, as well as a spokesperson for the National Police Association, said video of the incident showed a total disregard for proper police training.

Nobody teaches baton strikes above the shoulders, nobody teaches kicks to the head, [and] nobody teaches the denial of medical aid. These men were street fighting, they were not acting as police officers.

Moreover, these were violent kicks to the head and baton strikes, as Nichols lay motionless on the ground. I’m not a police trainer, but it appeared the officers who beat Nichols were acting out of anger — not as trained police officers attempting to de-escalate a confrontation.

As suggested by Fox News’ Howard Kurtz, Tyre Nichols should still be alive.

And he died in the most monstrous way possible, after a brutal assault by five members of the police who are sworn to uphold the law. Now that we’ve all seen the shocking videos – with the cops kicking, punching and beating with a baton a defenseless man on the ground, crying out for his mother – it is one of the most gruesomely documented instances in an inglorious history of police brutality.

Police brutality, without a doubt. That said, the question remains: should any of the former officers who were responsible for Nichols’ death ever have been hired in the first place, due to inadequate hiring requirements and/or experience? I can’t answer the question; I can only help facilitate a necessary dialogue.

The Bottom Line

While lowered hiring requirements, less-qualified job applicants, and incompetent employees might be okay for jobs at Walmart or McDonald’s, inadequately trained police officers, particularly those who patrol the streets, are a whole nother ballgame. Like commercial airline pilots, they must get it right every time, particularly during charged engagements with members of the public.

That did not happen in Memphis on January 7, 2023, when Tyre Nichols suffered a horrific beating that cost him his life.