If you're too smart, you can't be a cop?

Let me make this clear from the onset. I am not digging at police officers, whatsoever. I have a simple question, that may have been a rumor, but I can't remember and I can't find any answers sifting through Google results.

Q: Is there a rule that if a person scores too well on a police entrance exam that they are ruled out as too smart to be a police officer?

This is a rumor I heard in 1990s, where someone said the NY Post had uncovered a story where the NYPD was not accepting candidates because their IQ was too high.

I know... I know... this sounds mean spirited and low, but I honestly either read that in the NY Post or was told it by someone sometime in the early 1990s.

I guess I'm asking if anyone else has ever heard of this, or actually saw that article, or if there's any information to support this claim?

Again, I'm not playing fool and hating on police (there are some that have my utmost respect as community figures), I'm just trying to remember if this is/was true.

Why not? It happens in other jobs all the time. They call it be overqualified. In the past I was turned down for a few jobs as being overqualified. You see and hear about this overqualified crap all the time so what makes a job as a cop any different than any other job when it comes to the overqualified non-sense?

reply to post by Jason88

now i dont know what the academic standards are nationwide nor specifically in NY, however having gone to college and also gone to the California police academy, i can say that here the standards are actually pretty high.
If you fail a test in a Ca. police academy you get to take a second make up test with different questions. if you cant get 80% or higher on the test you are dropped from the academy. period.

failure of ANY test or scenario testing (after 1 chance for improvement) automatically disqualifies you from the academy and you are terminated.

academic standards are higher in Ca for most departments. if you dont have at the very least an associates degree you might as well not apply. 99% of applicants have a bachelors degree or higher. you must have a GPA of at least 3.0 to graduate from a Ca police academy, no test results below 80% are acceptable ever.

NY cops tend to make the news a lot for seemingly retarded things, maybe you have stumbled upon something important here.

reply to post by Jason88


It's not a rumor and it's not some shady secret that was uncovered by muckrakers. It's a plain proud and straight fact.

In a ruling made public on Tuesday, Judge Peter C. Dorsey of the United States District Court in New Haven agreed that the plaintiff, Robert Jordan, was denied an opportunity to interview for a police job because of his high test scores. But he said that that did not mean Mr. Jordan was a victim of discrimination.

Judge rules police can bar applicants on IQ

reply to post by fixer1967


police officers can NEVER be over qualified.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


wow that is insane!! hard to believe but there it is.

After I lost my job in 2008 I tried to send in an application for my local police dept. I had a bachelors degree at the time. One of the questions asked if I ever took the ASVAB (army entrance exam). I replied yes, since I had taken it and scored very very high on it. If i knew a little more about electrical diagrams and car mechanics I could've had a near perfect score. My girlfriend (now wife) stopped me from joining at the time.

When I never got a call back about my application I gave a call to the recruiter at the PD. They told me my application was considered, but my test score and skill set were not a good fit. I did write that I was interested in investigating white collar crime since I was a business major.

I dunno, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I have always tested well, always in advanced classes and such, very intelligent and learn quickly... and I couldn't believe they didn't want me.

I do know that agencies that give the Minnesota Multi Phasic Personality Inventory can reject based on personality profile. Take that for what its worth.

I have also heard that the highest scoring Army Officers make the worst Infantry Officers. That those that "over think" a situation cannot think as well on their feet and actually lose more troops in battle, I believe this is supported by history and so the Army sorts the brains for other jobs.

In the Navy the smartest end up in submarines - sort of a joke - sterotype. Goofy nerds in birth control glasses run the Nukes.

I can see where over thinking a situation, trying to think of all angles of situaiton would make one less prone over time to follow orders . . .

This pretty much sums up government job qualifications:

Originally posted by CaDreamer
reply to post by fixer1967

 

police officers can NEVER be over qualified.

Do not tell me that, tell it to the fools giving the test. They are the ones using that overqualified non-sense. You and I know better but unfortunately we are not the ones giving the test and doing the hiring.

Originally posted by Jason88
Let me make this clear from the onset. I am not digging at police officers, whatsoever. I have a simple question, that may have been a rumor, but I can't remember and I can't find any answers sifting through Google results.

Q: Is there a rule that if a person scores too well on a police entrance exam that they are ruled out as too smart to be a police officer?

This is a rumor I heard in 1990s, where someone said the NY Post had uncovered a story where the NYPD was not accepting candidates because their IQ was too high.

I know... I know... this sounds mean spirited and low, but I honestly either read that in the NY Post or was told it by someone sometime in the early 1990s.

I guess I'm asking if anyone else has ever heard of this, or actually saw that article, or if there's any information to support this claim?

Again, I'm not playing fool and hating on police (there are some that have my utmost respect as community figures), I'm just trying to remember if this is/was true.

No such thing. Actually, it's not that easy to be an officer. You have to learn all of the state and federal laws (at least enough to get you past the exam and to give you something to give you the tools to do your job) The exams I had to take in the P.A. were not that simple. It took weeks of studying to get passed it. Then there is the physicle aspect. If you cant do it, cant run the mile and a half, or finish any part of it... You're canned. There are still those grandfathered in but that's mostly the much older generation of cops.

I've met some pretty dunce cops in my time on the force, and some I wouldnt trust to save my life, and quite a few "i'll cover my ass, you cover your own" types. That's just the way it is. Where I am from, state doesnt often like local, and parish/county tends to go between both much of the time.

So no... Cops arnt "this high to ride". You're hearing just a rumor or a steriotype. Nothing more. As a matter of fact, if you fail the psych exam, they will punt you out just as quickly because they fear loose cannons. No one wants that kinda lawsuit.

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere
reply to post by Jason88

 

It's not a rumor and it's not some shady secret that was uncovered by muckrakers. It's a plain proud and straight fact.

In a ruling made public on Tuesday, Judge Peter C. Dorsey of the United States District Court in New Haven agreed that the plaintiff, Robert Jordan, was denied an opportunity to interview for a police job because of his high test scores. But he said that that did not mean Mr. Jordan was a victim of discrimination.

Judge rules police can bar applicants on IQ

This doesnt apply everywhere. I know people and investigators that were hired because they were VERY quick witted and all around smart people. I was hired on initially due to my troubleshooting skills and levelheaded investigative skills. Of course, all previous jobs helped give those attributes, but still, they were part of what had me join the PD in the first place years ago. Thankfully I dont have to deal with that anymore, and the income sucked horribly. Still, I respect officers, IF they respect back. Goes both ways, even when I was a man in blue.

Thanks all. So, in New Hampshire there is a finding or at least a proven instance, of someone who was too smart to be a cop.

Psych exams hold more weight in determining whether someone can be a police officer, but they must pass the entrance test.

California police are smarter need a higher education to join.

And, it makes more sense for certain policemen, maybe beat cops, to not over-think situations and instead rely on training and action.

Interesting....all of it.

I'm going back to digging for that NY Post story or anything that supports NYPD preventing people from joining who are too smart.

It also reminds of another story I read back then, or was told (my memory is not bad, but its been almost 20 years!), and that's that Rudy Giuliani lowered the bar to becoming a officer so he could flood NYC with 6,000 additional cops to enact his "broken window" theory on policing. If I remember right, that lowering allowed for convicts to join the NYPD as long their crime did not involve violence. Anyone remember that?

Originally posted by Jason88
Psych exams hold more weight in determining whether someone can be a police officer, but they must pass the entrance test.

California police are smarter need a higher education to join.

And, it makes more sense for certain policemen, maybe beat cops, to not over-think situations and instead rely on training and action.

I think a distinction need be made between being "smart" and being highly intelligent, they are not the same. The tales of Einstein having difficulty making correct change for the bus, true or not, illustrates this point. The bus driver may not recognize Einstein as being "smart" even if he was known to be highly intelligent.

These two virtues are not mutually inclusive in all instances and depending on the job one might be more highly sought after than the other. I think we want "smart" police officers who can learn the justice codes and procedures though their ability to solve differential equations may not be essential and possibly deemed over-qualifying.

this isn't the only case of this I've seen/heard of, just the only one I've seen catch on a little bit in the media...


City agrees to lower test scores for police exam

DAYTON — The city’s Civil Service Board and the U.S. Department of Justice have agreed on a lower passing score for the police recruit exam after it was rejected because not enough blacks passed the exam.

The city lowered both written exams a combined 15 points that resulted in 258 more people passing the exam, according to a statement released Thursday by Civil Service officials. The agreement allows the city to immediately resume its plans to hire police and firefighters.

The original passing scores determined by Civil Service required candidates to answer 57 of 86 (66 percent) questions correctly on one portion and 73 of 102 (72 percent) on the other. The lowered benchmark requires candidates to answer 50 of 86 (58 percent) questions correctly and 64 of 102 (63 percent) of questions on the other.

A total of 748 people passed the exam under the new benchmarks. It is unclear the demographics of those who passed.

abc.daytonsnewssource.com...

DAYTON -- The Dayton Police Department is lowering its testing standards for recruits.

It's a move required by the U.S. Department of Justice (D.O.J.) after it says not enough African-Americans passed the exam.

I kind of feel like they made it about race to make it a tar-baby that nobody wants to talk about...

Putting it crudely you, (well, maybe not) you could see the criteria once being applied in the military armed forces, in like taking orders unquestioningly, on the need to know basis and being trained until you are mentally muscle bound. A good policeman needs to be far more intelligent whether patrolman or detective. When you think about it though, they have to deal with the law and be in court as well, and all is done on a mechanical basis to perpetuate the 'high' authority of the law, and also to have acted 'inside the law' blah blah. Aside from that, there is also nepotistic 'copland' I don't think you need say more.

Here is proof that law enforcement discriminates against intelligent people:

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.

Source: abcnews.go.com...

So there you have it, at least in New London, CT. If you're too smart they believe you'll get bored as a cop. That seems so counter intuitive - why not fast track smart candidates into detectives or forensic types? Use smart people to your advantage, don't discriminate.

a reply to: Jason88
I realize this is a very old thread, but as I have experience with law enforcement in several states (friends and family) I will tell you what I believe to be the real reason that some government administrators do this.

It is not because highly intelligent people will become bored with police work and leave the force (this would be true in only fraction of cases). That is an obviously spurious pretext that relies on the reader being naive of the nature of gifted intelligence and unaware of what police work entails.

Police work has somewhat decent job security and is actually stimulating (particularly forensics and detective work). It is not the highest paying job, but it also doesn't pay badly. People with high intelligence quotients are not all investment bankers and nuclear physicists. Many people with high intelligence quotients work in menial jobs for their entire lives.

The actual reason for employing this limitation is that government administrators and law enforcement "old boys" want to protect their jobs from competition and hide certain activities from the tax payers. In many law enforcement organizations there are connections to corporate enterprise (as well as politicians and sometimes even organized crime) which represent a blatant conflict of interest to say the least.

Where these issues exist, the government administration does want to hire a ton of people who will anonymously contact higher government structures that will prosecute and eject the criminals. It would be reasonable to assume that corrupt government administrators are motivated to reduce the number of officers sophisticated enough to see the big picture and connect the dots, or at least avoid hiring officers that would even care.

One problem with this strategy is that typical psychopaths tend to score in the very high average (but not gifted range) of IQ tests and are attracted to jobs that involve excitement, weapons, the ability to abuse authority, and the opportunity to dominate and exploit defenseless people. Fortunately, these tests are not the most reliable indicator of intelligence to begin with (a bad burrito and a hangover can temporarily drop your score an entire standard deviation), so there are still plenty of gifted people getting into police work even in police departments that try to prevent them from joining.

a reply to: SupremoLagarto

A very old thread, this topic is always of interest to me. I appreciate your thoughtful response while including insight into job protection and corruption at the highest levels of law enforcement. I hadn't thought of those 'old boys' shielding their misdeeds from wiser eyes by lowering the standard of the force. That's terrible actually and maybe worse than their crime. (What do we tell kids, it's the lie that's worse than the deed).

You also bring in psychopaths - I think those types bubble up when you see officers who respond to challenges of authority with outright violence. (Say F U to a cop he tasers you; disobey get choked to death [in the news last week]).

I'd like to think the best and brightest join the forces, but having known a few cops fairly well recently (not a great sample size) I've found they actually lack imagination or creativity and thrive in environments where they're ordered around - it's easier that way.