With the MSM fixated on fixing the two most pressing problems in the known universe, the low percentage of black officers on the Ferguson, MO police department and the lack of black dominance of Ferguson’s machinery of government, it’s worth looking at some history:

From the Washington Post in 1994:

D.C. Police Paying for Hiring Binge

By Keith A. Harriston and

Mary Pat Flaherty

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, August 28, 1994; Page A01

Two ambitions drove Charles Smith in the summer of 1989. The first was to up his income as a member of the R Street Crew, a murderous drug gang. The second was to join the D.C. police force.

By fall, Smith had achieved both.

Smith was locked up in Prince George’s County awaiting trial on drug distribution charges when the letter of acceptance to the police academy arrived at his home. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” Smith recalled his father saying. “I can’t get you out. But you got a job with the police department.”

Smith got himself out. He cooperated with the court and named his drug supplier. Three months later, in November 1989, he donned his blue uniform, swore an oath to uphold the law and began classes as a police cadet – and sold PCP at least once more.

A year and a half later, detectives investigating the R Street Crew caught up with Smith, and he resigned a few months before he would have been eligible to receive his badge and gun.

The tale of how a drug dealer served 18 months as a D.C. police cadet is part of a larger story of breakneck hiring and training by the department in 1989 and 1990 with still unraveling consequences.

The most obvious of those consequences is the worst: An investigation by The Washington Post found that graduates in those two years alone, who make up about one-third of the force, account for:

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.

The Post reviewed hundreds of court files and internal department records on training and disciplinary actions and interviewed scores of police officers, prosecutors, judges and defense lawyers.

That investigation revealed a system that in 20 months of haste to meet a congressional deadline brought on board 1,471 officers – 40 percent of the force at the time – in a way that hardly provided the best selection of recruits or adequate training for even the most trusted, committed and hardworking in the classes.

Critical background checks on applicants were cut short, and investigators scrimped on visits to neighborhoods and interviews with former employers. Physical examinations were hurried, and some people who failed to meet minimum requirements were hired anyway. The psychological services unit, which had rejected one in five applicants in other years, rejected just one in 20.

During the peak recruiting time, 1,000 people took the police exam each month, and 60 percent of them passed. An additional 1,500 a month signed up for the police cadet program. The department wound up taking one in four comers, Police Chief Fred Thomas said, far more than the one in 12 hired during the early 1980s, and well above the national police average of one in 10. …

Less than a generation ago, the D.C. police department was a national model, flush with federal demonstration dollars and lauded as one of the first in the nation to put female officers on patrol. Officials won praise for the department’s handling of massive protests against the war in Vietnam and crises such as the takeover of three city buildings by a group of Hanafi Muslims in 1977.

But among the current generation of D.C. officers – armed and given authority to make life and death decisions – there are those who have raped and those who have beaten and stolen – from strangers and from each other. There are more than a few whose sense of right and wrong is so tied to a time clock that they say they can’t understand why they should be punished or fired for wrongs they commit off duty.

… Yet the rates at which officers are arrested in other large cities, including New York, pale in comparison with the D.C. figures.

… The hiring spree was a result of congressional alarm over the rising crime rate and the fact that 2,300 officers – about 60 percent of the department – were about to become eligible to retire. Congress voted to withhold the $430 million federal payment to the District for 1989 and again for 1990 until about 1,800 more officers were hired.

In interviews with The Washington Post, elected and department officials in charge during the period of unrestrained hiring faulted everyone but themselves.

D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who was mayor at the time and is seeking election to that office again this year, blamed then-Chief Isaac Fulwood Jr., Barry’s own appointee, and Congress. “Ike Fulwood … recruited, screened and made all of the decisions as to who was hired and fired,” Barry said. “Marion Barry did not make any of those decisions.”

Fulwood accused Barry of ignoring pleas to avert the hiring rush by bringing on more officers earlier. …

Without naming Barry, who defeated her in the 1992 Democratic primary, Rolark echoed Fulwood’s criticism of Barry’s inaction. “The council does one thing, and the executive does something else,” Rolark said. “The record speaks for itself.” As for problems that resulted from the hiring and training of the recruits, Rolark said, “That was the police department.”

Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, seeking reelection this year, and Chief Thomas said problems sullying the police department they now command were inherited from Barry and the council. …

Although the vast majority of the officers hired in the rush have not gotten in trouble with the law, one of every 14 officers hired has been arrested.