Dallas PD Applications Up 344%

After five police officers were murdered in Dallas July 7, applications to join the city's police force are up 344%, CNN reports. Four days after the shootings, the city's police chief urged Black Lives Matter protesters to join the force if they wanted to see changes. "We're hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in," he said. From June 8 to June 20, there were 136 applications submitted to the department; from July 8 to July 20, there were 467. As CNN notes, the department has been beset by morale problems for years, partially due to its low starting pay of less than $45,000 per year. In other parts of Texas, starting pay ranges from $52,176 to $63,757. (More Dallas police shooting stories.)