Does “dumbed down” epitomize today’s America? Many would answer yes, pointing to affirmative-action Ivy League presidents and even air-traffic controllers as cases in point. Now there’s another example, too:
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) is eliminating its “physical ability test.” Why?
It’s not that the recent-years attacks on law enforcement have created a recruiting shortfall (though this could possibly be an exacerbating factor). Rather, the powers that be want to get more women on the force.
As the Washington Examiner reports, the MNPD
has ditched its physical ability test and implemented lactation rooms as part of a greater effort to bring on more female police officers.
“It’s a male-dominated profession, so women are afraid to take that step, maybe thinking that they’re not able to do it, but you can do it if you have that right mindset [and people dumb down standards for you],” one police trainee said in a now-viral video by WSMV4.
Hiring a 30% female police force is a goal of the department, and Commander Tiffany Gibson, the first female director of training, said she believes that mark is attainable due to changes made to attract female recruits.
The department no longer requires a physical ability test, and it instead grades its trainees’ agility in a test designed to mirror tasks they may encounter in the field.
Lactation rooms for nursing mothers and flexible schedules have also been implemented.
“We’re trying to get going … possibly help sponsor our own child facility,” Gibson said. “I think that would be really helpful for females .”
That’s all that matters, too, right? And, surely, criminals are petrified contemplating the prospect of the lactation-room squad being loosed upon them.
For more details, commentator Matt Walsh posted a video (below) that he says illustrates the new fitness “standards.”
Walsh also added perspective, providing at The Daily Wire a bit of affirmative-action-folly history:
Four years ago, the city of Memphis decided to double down on a strategy of affirmative action policing that they had been practicing for decades.
Officially, the city’s theory was that black police officers are less likely to mistreat suspects, and more likely to do a better job, as compared to white officers. There was never any data to support that theory…. Indeed, Memphis had long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, despite all the diverse hiring they were doing. But in 2020, Memphis went for it. They reduced their hiring standards even further to attract more black police recruits…. As expected, more black people did sign up to become Memphis police officers.
… Instead of racial harmony, and a utopia where civil liberties were sacrosanct, the residents of Memphis were treated to one of the most brutal police beatings ever recorded on camera. Several black police officers — including officers hired after Memphis implemented its new affirmative action program — took turns pummeling a black man by the name of Tyre Nichols. He died, and the officers were charged with murder. Their “specialized policing unit” called SCORPION was disbanded immediately.
After this debacle, the idea of “diversifying” the police force by lowering standards should have ended forever.
(Note: The study I read years ago found that black cops were more likely than white ones, not less, to engage in police brutality.)
But dogmas die hard, and the civilizational sea change in attitude necessary to kill wokeness hasn’t occurred. So even though halfway-demasculinized MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) men have provided an object lesson in physical sex differences by invading women’s sports and winning competitions, feminism marches on.
Of course, the social engineers have their justifications. While touting the MNPD efforts in 2022, WKRN.com wrote that “research” found that the “community perceives women officers as more compassionate and trustworthy. In addition, female officers are less likely to use excessive force.”
The latter is no doubt true. Unsaid: This is likely because female cops generally stand back and let male colleagues do the dirty work. An example was the well-publicized case of Eric Garner, who died after being arrested in 2014; A female sergeant hung back while male cops restrained the 400-pound man.
In reality, dumbing down standards to facilitate female cops’ recruitment goes back to at least the 1970s and the application of “disparate-impact theory.” This states that if certain groups (in practice, politically favored groups) cannot measure up to a test/standard as well as others do, that yardstick is by definition unjustly discriminatory and must be scrapped. A prime example was when Barack Obama’s Department of Justice sued the Pennsylvania State Police in 2014 for treating women equally and requiring them, along with the men, to pass an already dumbed-down physical fitness test.
Further illustrating this affirmative-action folly, and how far back it goes, is an amusing video I made in February (below) about a Chilean all-female SWAT team’s humiliation at an international police competition. (It features “commentary” from famed film cop “Dirty Harry” from the ’70s.)
Some women agree with ’ol Harry, too. As commentator Olivia Murray writes on the MNPD matter, “There’s never a scenario in which a female is the best option for a physically-demanding life-and-death job… which is why for all of human history, wars have been fought almost entirely by men.”
“What right do we have as females to compel inclusion in an environment,” she later adds, “which in doing so, puts others at an increased risk because of our physical limitations?”
Well, the feminists may say, don’t ask, don’t tell.
