Apparently, a record-free police recruit is hard to find.

More than one third of recent graduates of the Atlanta Police Academy has been arrested or “cited.” Crimes range from shoplifting to assault. (Source)

Strange to know the gun-equipped cop pulling you over may have a record of violent crimes. Nice.

“We would like, in an ideal world, to see every applicant with a clean record, but obviously that’s not reality,” whined Lt. Elder Dancy. “I don’t think you’ll find any departments who hire only applicants with squeaky-clean records.”

So, why is a cop with a criminal record more common today than “three decades ago”? Let’s speculate. Lowering standards for whatever reason (to redress past wrongs, to increase skin-deep diversity, etc.) in one institution reverberates throughout others. The dumbing-down tendency is pathological and irreversible. If I were a betting woman, I’d wager that the percentage of cops with criminal records and the department’s “diversity” goals are correlated.

But since I’m not, I won’t.