Lower Standards, Lower Quality - But We're Good.

This is the third DC cop to be arrested within the past eleven days. A school services officer was just indicted on felony charges after assaulting his wife.

A D.C. police officer has been indicted on a charge of attempted murder after allegedly trying to kill his wife with a metal light fixture and threatening her with knives in their home in Prince George’s County.

Prosecutors announced the indictment Friday against Officer Samson Edwards Lawrence III, 45, who lives in Accokeek. The 23-year veteran is charged with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault and two counts of possessing a dangerous weapon with intent to injure.

The other two officers are:

Officer Marc Washington's body was pulled from the water at Hains Point in southwest D.C. Dec. 10, a week after he was arrested on child porn charges after he allegedly visited the home of a teenage girl who had previously been reported missing, ordered her to remove her clothing and took photos of her, all while he was on duty.

Officer Linwood Barnhill Jr. was arrested last week and charged with pandering after police found a missing 16-year-old girl in his apartment. He is accused of running a prostitution operation.

[...] Lawrence and Barnhill were hired in 1990 and 1989, respectively, when D.C. police lowered hiring standards to quickly add 1,500 officers to the force. Police officials say that standards have become more rigorous and that many officers hired then would not be now.

The hiring of substandard personnel is costly. Lawsuits arising from the criminal actions of police officers can hurt municipalities already staggering under fiscal burdens imposed by unfunded state and federal social spending mandates.

Even liberal rags like the WashPost realized this nearly twenty years ago in this 1994 article on police corruption.

More than half of the 201 D.C. police officers arrested since 1989 on charges ranging from shoplifting and forgery to rape and murder. Some have been arrested more than once and in more than one year.

More than half of those involved in departmental disciplinary proceedings for breaches such as neglecting duty, making false statements and failing to obey orders, which have doubled since 1989.

Half of those on a list of 185 D.C. officers so tainted by their own criminal problems that prosecutors won’t put them on a witness stand as officers of the law.

I wonder how many of these officers are still on the force?

I still remember a story that an officer on my department related to me years ago. He was a cop on the City of Baltimore PD for a while before returning to upstate NY and joining my department.  While he was still in the Baltimore PD police academy, two detectives from another state (Missouri maybe?) walked into his class and arrested one of his classmates for murder. So much for background checks.