The Place Where Ludington Talks
Intelligencism: Police Refuse Smart Applicants for Positions
Our progressive, enlightened friends from ABC News reports an interesting story from our progressive, enlightened friends from Connecticut about a dozen years ago:
Basil Rathbone as the master of deduction, Scotland Yard's own Sherlock Holmes
Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops
A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.
“This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.”
He said he does not plan to take any further legal action.
Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.
Most Cops Just Above Normal The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average.
Jordan alleged his rejection from the police force was discrimination. He sued the city, saying his civil rights were violated because he was denied equal protection under the law.
But the U.S. District Court found that New London had “shown a rational basis for the policy.” In a ruling dated Aug. 23, the 2nd Circuit agreed. The court said the policy might be unwise but was a rational way to reduce job turnover.
Jordan has worked as a prison guard since he took the test.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=9...
It seemed like a rather odd thing for a court to do, so I went to check out the court order/opinion to make sure the story wasn't embellishing the facts. They seem to be pretty accurate, the court concluding among many things: "We agree that New London’s use of an “upper cut” did not violate the equal protection clause and affirm the judgment of the district court." Read the order here.
In recent days, this court order has been kicking around the internet newsiverse for further review or for supporting someone's theses or points. It's a common FOIA exemption to block information about applications for police work, so it is actually hard to research this further in most states, including Michigan.
Tests are normally used to filter out those that are not capable to do a task or a job. If an employment test shows that someone is not only minimally qualified, but is also exceptionally qualified, normally those individuals are selected above the ones that just squeak through. Believing that someone is 'overqualified' for police work because they score very high on these tests is made with the prejudice that such competent individuals will tire of the job and move on.
As the court concluded: "that even absent a strong proven statistical correlation between high scores on the Wonderlic test and turnover resulting from lack of job satisfaction, it is enough that the city believed... that there was such a connection. Plaintiff presented some evidence that high scorers do not actually experience more job dissatisfaction, but that evidence does not create a factual issue, because it matters not whether the city’s decision was correct so long as it was rational."
So let's presume that having this upper cut-off line is a standard practice throughout the 50 states, and Ludington. The article notes that the national average on this test equates to an IQ of 104, at the midpoint of average in the bell curve, and that slightly above this (but still in the first deviation of average) is the upper intelligence level for being a police officer.
Bumbling and off-setting but extremely clever sleuth Lieutenant Columbo
Police officers develop into tomorrow's police detectives, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, and chiefs,, and so what we have in a typical police department is a group of individuals that all have average IQs. Those with high IQs are generally gifted with traits that a group which excludes them from membership may not possess. They generally exhibit much higher aptitudes in logic, spatial skills, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, abstract reasoning, writing skills, eclecticism, curiosity, inquisitiveness, organization, efficiency, and originality.
These traits make dealing with unique situations and investigative work more easy for the more intelligent... and yet our local governments and police departments want to restrict smart officers from existing, when it would be greatly beneficial to the public for them to do the very involved investigations that may come up at any department. This is the reason why the New Haven policy is truly irrational, and other similar policies, as well. The upper cut-off keeps the most qualified, knowledgeable people out of some of the most important investigations and out of the leadership roles.
This helps explain the lack of quality investigative and quality leadership we have had to endure in our area over the last several years here in Mason County. Average minds doing average thinking, when the people should have at least some exceptional minds in investigation and leadership roles doing exceptional thinking. For a short list of where leadership and detective skills have faltered recently:
Baby Kate: Ludington Police Dept. and Mason County Sheriff's Office sits on information and on their hands from June 2011 on, before planning a Witch-Hazel-Hunt two years after the fact.
Lingyan Zou: Chinese immigrant dies at marina, LPD's detective JB Wells writes a better science fiction story than HG Wells.
Darius Vanbrook: Sergeant Kim Cole violates conflict of interest rules while ignoring his own officer's infractions, and lack of any accident reconstruction (he prides himself on) that would point to further blame on one of his own.
Todd Lane Johnson: MCSO investigators and Sheriff Kim Cole blocks disclosures of information, and calls the presumed-innocent Johnson guilty of CSC, in a deeply flawed investigation still withheld from the public, where Johnson is cleared of any wrongdoing..
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