Sept. 8, 2000 – 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.
You mean a cosmetology license. I dated a college instructor, there’s more one needs to know than most would guess. Long story short, there’s a lot of chemistry and health training. It’s shockingly easy to fuck someone up.
One example she gave me, “You can’t use $chemical on old people if their hands look like (whatever I forgot). That’s a symptom of (whatever) and their fingernails will fall off.” Heysus!
Or, “You can’t mix this and that. Makes a wildly exothermic reaction.”
And there’s no grouping “police” in America. According to the FBI, there are 18,000 police departments. They range from LAPD gang bangers to Mayberry cops.
This isn’t saying it isn’t hard to be a cosmetologist, it’s saying it’s far too easy to become a cop. I don’t see anyone saying we should relax the regulations for cosmotology, rather we need to raise them on the police. It’s just absurd that an LEO can order you around, arrest you, and sometimes kill you and the requirements for the job are so low.