I see it going on around me. One twenty one year old whom I have known since he was twelve went to work as a corrections officer at the jail where I am told some of the prisoners called him “Barney” to his face and now has moved onto a gun carrying position with the sheriff’s department. He is an okay young man but I honestly don’t think he should be in law enforcement.
30 years ago we had a fairly close acquaintance who actually earned a criminal justice degree at a 4 year private university. He was not able to find a job on a police department or the state patrol because he kept failing the psych tests. We felt sorry for our friend but we were also somewhat relieved because we were always a little worried about how his emotional issues might affect his performance. We enjoyed being around him, and did not feel threatened but there were reasons that the police psychologists felt he was a risky candidate. He was a body builder, tall, with an intimidating appearance but he was always very paranoid and never left the house without having at least two holstered firearms and a knife. The strangest thing to us was that he was very afraid of dogs even our miniature dachshunds. But in hindsight he has never got in any trouble in the more than 30 years we have known him and is a very good citizen.
I worked with the police on an almost daily basis for 25 years after that on a fire department. I was always comparing their temperament to our friend. I met so many who I thought were less stable than him. And as someone else pointed out, it was a complete mystery how some of the affirmative action hires were able to have ever gotten on in the first place let alone make it through their probationary periods. My feeling is that they have continued to lower the standards over the years, at first so they could get the affirmative action hires the department wanted, but in the last few years it has been much harder to attract good candidates. So all this negative perception is actually having a negative affect on the quality of police officers in my opinion.