imported post
Here is a link to an article about the case mentioned above:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/09/n...rules-that-police-can-bar-high-iq-scores.html
They've been at this for over 10 years. There has been a concerted effort by LEAs nationwide, at the direction of the US DOJ to lower their testing standards. They say it's to increase "diversity" in the police force, but I think it's actually to make the police LESS diverse--such standards ensure that the bulk of the people will be incapable of critical thinking, have difficulty processing complex information, and will be more likely to resort to force rather than deal with difficult situations with rational thought and "people skills"...
Our government is VERY efficient, folks--we get EXACTLY what we pay for. They paid for a nation of hyper-militarized, thuggish, dumbed-down LEO's, and that's exactly what we're getting...
According to recently published studies by the DOJ, the national average for police is somewhere between 90 and 104, depending on who did the study. "Average" IQ among ALL people in the US is considered to be 102. You do the math...
This article from Investors Business Daily pretty much sums it up...
DUMBING DOWN THE POLICE FORCE For Diversity's Sake, Feds Fight Cognitive Tests David A. Price
6/13/97 [line] If the Justice Department has its way, the police officer of the future will be singing "If I Only Had A Brain."
That, at least, is the reaction of some experts to a series of recent suits brought by the department.
Since the late 1980s, the department's Civil Rights Division has been pressuring police forces across the country to abandon "cognitive" entrance exams, which test for basic reading, writing, memory and reasoning skills.
Justice argues that such tests are illegal because they exclude too many minorities from the ranks of the police. And, Justice says, the tests aren't sufficiently related to police work.
A test that hurts minorities more often than whites is illegal under federal civil rights laws unless it is "job-related" and "consistent with business necessity."
Some localities have capitulated, changing exams so they test mainly personality, not literacy or brainpower.
Supporters of cognitive tests argue that they are a cost-effective way to screen thousands of applicants for skills needed on the job. They say police officers need mental skills to make quick decisions about everything from the constitutional rights of suspects to the use of deadly force.
"Police jobs, like all middle- and high-complexity jobs, require cognitive skills," said Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware education department, a critic of Justice's campaign. "The research shows that cognitive tests will to some extent predict performance in those jobs."
As of 1993, some 83% of large city and county police forces used cognitive tests in hiring, according to a survey conducted for the Justice Department.
That may be changing.
New York.[/b] Nassau County on New York's Long Island agreed to replace its entrance exam seven years ago, under pressure from the Bush Justice Department.
Justice said the exam was discriminatory even though it was the product of a settlement of an earlier civil rights suit.
The new exam - developed by a testing firm under the supervision of Justice and the county - replaced written cognitive sections with new ones that relied on videotapes instead of reading.
The new exam also added personality tests for traits like "achievement motivation" and "openness to experience."
Even that wasn't enough. The county threw out 16 of the 25 sections after the test was given in 1994. The testers found that those sections had too much "adverse impact" on minorities.
Eight of the nine sections left were personality sections.
The one cognitive section that stayed was a reading comprehension test, which was graded pass-fail. To pass, applicants had to score only as well as the bottom 1% of current police officers.
In response to critics, the team that developed the test wrote that cognitive ability "did not prove to be related to assessed job performance" in police work. It added that dropping cognitive tests was justified because "police departments cannot function effectively in minority neighborhoods when virtually all police officers are white males."
But the test produced some peculiar outcomes.
When William Hayden, a fire marshall and former New York City cop, took the test in 1994, he got a marginal score of 78.9. Hayden found that other applicants with law enforcement experience also received low scores.
The New York-based Atlantic Legal Foundation recently filed a reverse discrimination suit against the county on behalf of Hayden and 67 other white and Hispanic applicants, many with experience on other police forces.
"There are better ways to diversify a police force than giving this coin-toss police test," said Hayden. "Their recruiting is so poor. They set tables up in the poorest neighborhoods and cajole people into signing up for the police test. Why don't they go to top black colleges and recruit people?"
Other nearby police departments are also under pressure to revamp their tests.
Justice sent a letter in March to officials in Suffolk County directing them to throw out their current police exam - although it, too, had been adopted as part of a settlement in a previous civil rights suit.
Justice said too few of the test's top scorers were minorities. If the test were race neutral, top scorers would have included 249 more blacks, 170 more Hispanics and 447 fewer whites, the department claimed.
And the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sued the New Jersey State Police in state court last year over its entrance exam and college education requirements.
Louisiana.[/b] The Louisiana State Police also bowed to pressure from the Justice Department in a consent decree last August. The police force replaced a cognitive exam with one that initially contained six parts: three personality, one biographical, and two cognitive.
The force later threw out one of the cognitive sections to reduce the impact on minorities.
According to Steve Wollack, head of the Redmond, Wash., test development firm Wollack & Associates, the remaining cognitive part has 20 questions -and most applicants get essentially the same score on it. "It's a cursory examination," he said.
"The portion of the overall test score that comes from the cognitive section is minuscule," according to Wollack.
Wollack, whose tests are not used by the Louisiana State Police, but who is familiar with the situation, said that the new test is "no better than chance."
He added, "It's the same story as in Nassau County. They're watering down the examination by denuding the cognitive content."
California.[/b] One locality that has stood firm is the Southern California city of Torrance. Justice sued that city in July of 1993, arguing that its entrance exams for police officers and firefighters had an adverse impact on minorities.
Before filing suit, Justice proposed a settlement in which Torrance would abandon the tests and create a multi-million dollar compensation fund for alleged victims of the tests.
Torrance declined to settle, although several neighboring communities had done so.
"The city concluded early on, 'We haven't done anything wrong, and we're not going to be told that we have, and we're not going to be told how to select police officers and firefighters,' " said attorney Wayne Flick, who is representing Torrance.
Last September, Judge Mariana Pfaelzer ruled for the city. She found that the cognitive tests are a legitimate tool for hiring police and firefighters. Justice's argument about differences in pass rates for whites and minorities "did not take into account factors such as fluency in English, educational quality or cultural/socioeconomic influences," she noted.
The Justice Department's appeal of that decision is now pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Testing Firms' Plight.[/b] Justice's shift away from cognitive testing has meant problems for test development firms that haven't embraced the new philosophy.
One such firm is Richardson, Bellows and Henry of Arlington, Va., which worked with Justice during the '80s to develop exams with less impact on minorities. Its exams have been used in Suffolk County and New Jersey under earlier Justice consent decrees.
But starting in 1988, Justice's goal became "impact reduction at all costs," says company president Frank Erwin. When that shift continued, his firm and Justice parted ways.
"Very often, a case will rise or fall on the content, the accuracy and the thoughtfulness of the arresting officer's written report or the arresting officer's oral testimony," Erwin said. "That is pure, unadulterated mental ability."
Now the firm is in Justice's gun sights. "In 1996, Justice was going around knocking on our clients' doors saying, 'Here's the Nassau test. You ought to take a look at it.' "
More recently, as the Nassau exam has come under fire from critics, Justice has started to promote the Louisiana State Police program instead, according to Erwin.
"It's not a comfortable position to be in," Erwin said.
[line] Reprinted by permission of INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY, June 13, 1997.
Copyright © 1997, Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
