Tucker Carlson claimed Monday that “affirmative motion” hiring selections made by the Memphis Police Division contributed to the demise of Tyre Nichols, who was crushed by a number of officers earlier this month.
Of the 5 officers who have been fired and charged with homicide, two have been employed by the division after the social justice protests spurred by the demise of George Floyd in Could 2020—a undeniable fact that the Fox Information host cited to attempt to make his case.
Carlson known as the 2 officers, Demetrius Haley and Tadarrius Bean, “affirmative motion hires” who had been introduced onto the power beneath “lax, diversity-driven requirements.”
“As a substitute of admitting that it’s true, the media are diverting consideration from that reality by accusing the 5 officers, who're all black, of someway being white supremacists,” Carlson claimed earlier than exhibiting information clips of commentators and journalists discussing the difficulty.
Based on the Fox host, the protests in the summertime of 2020 “have been by no means about George Floyd.”
“They have been about altering the nation eternally. Step one, after all, was defunding police departments throughout the nation and forcing them to decrease their requirements to draw unqualified candidates — hiring gives based mostly on pores and skin colour moderately than integrity or ability or self-control. All within the identify of fairness,” Carlson stated. “Does that end in higher policing? Effectively, what occurred in Memphis just a few weeks in the past is one indicator.”
The Memphis Police Division nixed a requirement that candidates have an affiliate’s diploma or 54 faculty credit score hours, however that was in 2018, Motion 5 Information reported on the time.