A detective at age 22? Wow!
Rivera?? Sounds like a quota hiring.
My dad was NYPD for 23 years and a gold shield detective for 7 years. He never got the Sergeant promotion and was bypassed for promotion by those who had half the service time he did (17 yrs versus 8 yrs) and scored half on the test (he 92, those promoted 44).
Wanna guess why??
I thought it was odd, too, so looked it up. It was a posthumous promotion.