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US Court Says it’s Okay for Police Departments to Refuse to Hire Someone too smart

Jeff. State

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US Court Says it’s Okay for Police Departments to Refuse to Hire Someone who is Too Smart



Ever wonder why cops yell “quit resisting” as they beat a person who’s not resisting? Or why they shoot people who pose no threat? Maybe the answer is right in front of us.

(Photo Norbert Schiller/Mint Press)
(Photo Norbert Schiller/Mint Press)

The Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test is a popular group intelligence test used to assess the aptitude of prospective employees for learning and problem-solving in a range of occupations. Throughout both the U.S. and Canada, many police forces require candidates to take this test as one of the qualifications prior to being hired.

The standard range of scores applied for police officers is a score between 20 and 27. According to ABC News, The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average. A perfect score on the Wonderlic is a 50.

On March 16, 1996 Robert Jordan from Connecticut, and 500 others underwent a written screening process which included the Wonderlic Test, conducted by the Law Enforcement Council of Southeastern Connecticut, Inc. (“LEC”), a coalition of fourteen cities and towns, in order to apply for a position as a police officer.

Several months later Jordan learned that the city of New London had began interviewing candidates. After not hearing from them, Jordan inquired as to why he was passed over.

Jordan eventually learned from assistant city manager Keith Harrigan that he would not be interviewed because he “didn’t fit the profile.”

Thinking it was obviously age discrimination because he was 46 at the time, Jordan filed an administrative complaint with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities.

The response that he received was completely out of left field. The city responded that it removed Jordan from consideration because he scored a 33 on the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test, and that to prevent frequent job turnover caused by hiring overqualified applicants the city only interviewed candidates who scored between 20 and 27.

The city of New London claims that “People within certain ranges achieve a degree of job satisfaction and are likely to be happy and therefore stay on the job.” They apparently believed that Jordan was too smart to be happy being a cop.

This reasoning did not seem logical to Jordon so he filed a civil rights action in the District Court for the District of Connecticut alleging that the city and Harrigan denied him equal protection in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and Article 4, Section 20, of the Connecticut Constitution.

On August 29, 1999 the court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment citing “no suspect classification and that defendants had ‘shown . . . a rational basis’ for the policy.”

Jordan, thinking that this must be just a fluke ruling, then appealed and brought his case to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.





In the interim Jordan conducted his own research which showed that high scores do not actually correlate with experiencing more job dissatisfaction. The court ruled that despite the evidence to the contrary of New London’s claim, they are still justified in refusing applicants with high IQs “because it matters not whether the city’s decision was correct so long as it was rational.”

Because all applicants were denied based on high test scores, there was no discrimination taking place.

This decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to condone the ability of police departments to discriminate against smart people is one of the most profoundly ridiculous moves ever made. But it also tends to explain the state of police departments today.

It takes a special kind of person to go to work every day and harass, kidnap, and kill people for victimless crimes. The act of unquestioningly carrying out orders to ruin the lives of good people whose only “crime” was to do with their own body as they wish, would eventually have to raise the eyebrow of a person with a higher level of intelligence…or so we’d like to think.

Knowing that this ability to discriminate against intelligence in police departments exists tends to put ‘Police State USA’ in perspective. In the past decade we’ve seen heavily militarized actions against non-violent protesters. We’ve even seen school districts accepting MRAPs! And we’ve watched from the sidelines as Mayberry transformed to Martial Law.

A smart person does not create a domestic standing army and call it freedom.

A smart person does not deliberately tear gas journalists. A smart person does not point a rifle an an innocent person and tell them that they are going to kill him. A smart person does not severely beat a person with down syndrome because he sees a bulge in his pants, which is actually a colostomy bag. A smart person does not continuously shoot at an unarmed man who posed zero threat and whose arms are in the air.

If more people knew this information you could rest assured that they would try and reform their police departments. No one wants their police officers to be unintelligent, right?

Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore helped to expose what happened to Jordan as well as the ridiculous notion of discriminating based on intelligence levels, on his show “The Awful Truth.” The 8 minute segment, while hilarious, paints an ominous picture of adhering to such tactics.





http://thefreethoughtproject.com/court-police-departments-refuse-hire-smart/
 

PistolPackingMomma

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This discussion about IQ values is utterly meaningless if you actually understand the actual purpose and implementation history of Alfred Binet's intelligence quotient test.

Binet insisted upon three cardinal principles for using his test.
1. The scores are a practical device. They do not measure intelligence or any other
reified entity.
2. The scale is rough and used as a guide for identifying learning-disabilities; not a
device for ranking normal children.
3. Emphasis on improvement through special classes, and low scores shall not mark the
child as innately incapable.

However, his cardinal principles were overturned by American hereditarians who translated his scale into written form as a routine device for testing all children. The misuse of his test came from two fallacies: reification and hereditarianism, both were eager to use his test to maintain social ranks and distinctions.

http://anthropology6030.blogspot.com/2009/10/hereditarian-theory-of-iq-american.html?m=1

For lighter reading;
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/iq-scores-not-accurate-marker-of-intelligence-study-shows/
 
Last edited:

skidmark

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Old news ... many threads already discussed this

Yes it is.

But it always seems to amaze and astound folks when they first learn of this little factoid. And since it's not taught in [strike]schools[/strike] public indoctrination centers that is how the knowledge is passed on.

stay safe.
 

Primus

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Yes it is.

But it always seems to amaze and astound folks when they first learn of this little factoid. And since it's not taught in [strike]schools[/strike] public indoctrination centers that is how the knowledge is passed on.

stay safe.
What factoid? That the average officer scores an equivalent of a 104 IQ which is above average?

Sounds like a myth keeps getting propagated in the face of facts. This article posted says right in it they score above average. The guy in question scored too high above average.

This is a perfect case of how a set of facts can be presented to fit an agenda or convenience. Instead or saying "allowed to disqualify officers that are too far above average" it's "allowed to disqualify smart cops" which leaves the impression they want DUMB cops. That's completely inaccurate.

But who cares about accuracy or truth?
 

skidmark

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What factoid? That the average officer scores an equivalent of a 104 IQ which is above average?

Sounds like a myth keeps getting propagated in the face of facts. This article posted says right in it they score above average. The guy in question scored too high above average.

This is a perfect case of how a set of facts can be presented to fit an agenda or convenience. Instead or saying "allowed to disqualify officers that are too far above average" it's "allowed to disqualify smart cops" which leaves the impression they want DUMB cops. That's completely inaccurate.

But who cares about accuracy or truth?

Are you suggesting that this is an isolated incident, as opposed to being a bit in a stream of similar incidents? At some point the repetition of an event resulting in the same and predictable outcome moves from being considered a theory to being considered a fact. It is suggested that there are a sufficient number of instances, over a sufficiently long period of time, to suggest this is not a random event. Your statement "allowed to disqualify officers that are too far above average" proves the point that this is not an isolated incident.

Your assertion, and that of the article, is that the candidates hired scored "above average." You are both wrong. "Average" carries with it a standard statistical deviation of +/- 15 points. Thus anybody scoring 85, as well as anybody scoring 115, are by definition "average".

But what concerns me most is the bureaucratic mindset that believes that a person who scores above a certain setpoint on an intelligence test will become bored with the job and cause unnecessary turnover after the expenditure of large sums of money training the person for the job. There is some indication that such might be true for jobs that require only the repetition of some specific task in response to a specific stimulus (assembly line work, for instance) or where the job requires little independent thinking (trash truck rider, fast food worker, for instance). But it seems that the bureaucracy has decided that police work fits that mold of repetitious activity not requiring any great thinking, and that those with higher than average intelligence scores will become bored and move on. (Or possibly that those with higher intelligence scores might become aware of the disconnect between stated purpose and actual job outcome, and become disaffected and thus move on.)

So - is being a cop a mindless menial job, or is it that only those with higher-than-normal intelligence are able to discern some possible defect in the operation and performance of police activity, or is it that someone was sold a bill of goods about intelligence score testing?

stay safe.
 

OC for ME

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Cop work is drone work. I witness many cops sitting next together in their cruisers, driver side to driver side, BSing. Nothing wrong with BSing per se, unless you (the cop(s)) start touting all the life saving, and citizen rescuing that is being done. My cop buddy is above average on the IQ scale and he enjoys his work...being a STL County PD officer that is.
 
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