Miami did this some years back - hired a bunch of police officers in a hurry to get grant money or some such thing... it was a disaster. Lower standards means more problems... lots more.
Many municipalities don’t want to accept fed or state funds to hire new employees or build new schools because in a very short time the costs will make them regret it. The brick & mortar of the new school, or the salary of the rookie cop, is not the problem; the problem becomes the teachers’ salaries and the cop’s a few years (VERY FEW years) down the road. The teacher tenure is the kiss of death, and when “outside” funding dries up you have a scenario like NJ, where taxpayers are literally being driven out of the state by property taxes completely out of proportion to services received. The sanctity of tenure and pay increases can’t be challenged, so everything else (police, fire, public works, etc.) gets cut to accomodate the teachers. The fact that Newark, Jersey City, Camden, and Paterson laid off so many police officers while their teachers are sitting pretty says it all; they have become NJ’s “upper middle class” (replacing the former upper middle class, composed of many professionals working in the financial and pharmaceutical sectors until those jobs started leaving).
>>Lower standards means more problems... lots more.<<
I have a feeling that they know all about that stuff. I’ll bet they’ve seen the most recent reports and studies.
I was born there and left in 1970 when I saw it was falling apart and imploding at the same time.
Now its a mecca for steel companies who build bars for windows.