The brutal police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis has shocked the nation and renewed an already running debate about police reforms, including basic questions about standards for the hiring, training, and discipline of law enforcement personnel. A recent story in the Washington Post conveys just how egregious the situation in Memphis is. According to the report, the same five police officers who were caught on video beating Nichols to death were part of a coterie of officers who had swarmed and repeatedly assaulted another motorist, Monterrious Harris, only three days earlier.

As the account goes, on January 4, Harris had been sitting in a car outside his cousin’s apartment when eight officers converged on his car, guns drawn, and ordered him out of the car. One of them shouted, “I will shoot you!” Harris initially put his car into reverse but then noticed that the officers might be law enforcement. He came out of his car, hands raised, and was hit with a barrage of punches. He is now suing the officers and the city of Memphis for civil rights violations.

Other Memphis residents have come forward with allegations of violent police tactics. By one account, back in June, two of the five officers implicated in Nichols’ death, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith, had yanked Darick Lane out of a car window and threatened to shoot him if he moved. Another one of the officers, Demetrius Haley, used to be a corrections officer, during which time he was alleged in a lawsuit to have been complicit with others in slamming an inmate’s head into a sink; the suit was dismissed for lack of proper service to the defendants. Four of the five officers—Haley, Mills, Smith, and Emmitt Martin—had previously been disciplined for failures to report the use of physical force or other circumstances that required reporting.

As litigation proceeds, we can expect to learn more details confirming that a deficiency of hiring standards and lack of accountability for police officers in Memphis is a recurring problem. Significantly, the Washington Post reports that “In an effort to bring in more recruits, department officials changed the requirements and standards for joining the force, including by easing the physical fitness requirements and softening restrictions on hiring applicants with criminal convictions.” The New York Post highlighted Memphis’ diminution of hiring standards, dropping requirements that recruits have either an associate’s degree or 54 college credit hours. A high school degree and steady employment for five years after high school became sufficient with a promise to get an associate’s degree within four years of hiring. The paper ran a commentary by James Gagliano, a retired FBI agent, that describes what appears to have happened as the result of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—the downgrading of requirements as they give way to a focus on “equal outcomes.”

DEI marks a departure from society’s longstanding esteem for equal opportunity and merit, replacing concern for the best interests of the people with a woke agenda. Whether and to what extent a DEI framework compromised the police force is a question ripe for investigation by Jonathan Skrmetti, Tennessee’s attorney general, and other officials with responsibility over law enforcement.

There are deadly consequences to allowing unfit recruits to exert deadly force. The public deserves not only accountability after the fact, but also meaningful hiring standards in the first place.