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.
I applied in Canada to a Law Enforcement program with a past-secondary institution.
I was told by a VERY senior member of the force (family friend) that I was simply too smart for the rank and file and was consequently turned down. He said “…they don’t want people who will think for themselves and question their orders. The whole point is to have force who will follow the rules without question. You don’t fit that mold”. The “rules” in this case is really just the police culture, and status quo.
The man who told me this, rose to Police Chief of a Major Canadian city from uniformed officer. Retired now.
I believe him.
Dumb soldiers who apply force when told. That’s what they want, …mostly.
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Obtaining a barber license means that you have completed a minimum of 1,250 hours of instruction in barbering education within a period of at least 9 months or completed 1,250 hours of training. It takes 1,250 to 2,000 hours to be a cosmologist. Police in Germany get 2.5 years of training, and in Finland, police education takes three years to complete. Police in the USA get 750 hours.
Some police in america get 750. Others are merely elected to sheriff as a political appointment.
edit: This very silly and also somehow serious video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt5I3V5hWkU
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=gt5I3V5hWkU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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.
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
Yea sure, because they could get “bored”. What you really mean is because they could start asking questions and potentially start changing the way things are typically done.
And have to be bullied out or fired to prevent that, making the police department lose their expensive investment.
There are good cops - they just end up getting bullied out or fired for trying to do the right (and legal) thing
There are policing organizations that are still very hungry for well-educated and intelligent recruits. In the USA, the FBI and the CIA both have high barriers to entry. The NSA is easily one of the biggest employers of mathematicians in the world. The IRS, the SEC, the FDA, the FCC, the DEA - all happy to hire smart young professionals.
You’re not going to get a job as a beat cop, but you’re very much in the running for the DA’s office as a prosecutor or the state homicide detective’s unit. And don’t worry, there are plenty of very intelligent people who are also very dependable when it comes to taking a kickback and keeping their mouths shut.
Yes but those places don’t hire people who have ever used cannabis even though that is most of the college educated population. So really you’re screwed either way.
Sure. But you can just… lie. When asked “have you ever used drugs”, say no.
Just as an FYI, whether lie detector tests are accurate or not, lying in a polygraph interview for a federal background check is a crime. Polygraph interviews can and do sometimes lead to criminal prosecution.
These days, it’s not actually a blanket ban on anyone who used cannabis. To join the FBI, you need to be cannabis-free for 1 year before applying for a job.
https://fbijobs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-04/guide_eligibility.pdf
That’s a lifetime ban for me. I rely on it medically.
Corrupt systems cannot be changed from within. By their nature they select against honest agents.
Just as a quick example it’s common for police to pad their overtime. Now suppose Officer Honest always turns in an accurate timesheet. Officer Honest never makes arrests for bullshit. On paper, Officer Honest is lazy and unproductive compared to their dishonest peers.
2000 called, it wants it’s 24 year old article back.
Hold on. Can’t we all just go back to that time instead?
Only if the time loop repeats on September 10, 2001. I wouldn’t want to relive the past 23 years.
Yeah I thought it was a mistake when I saw the article date.
I remember reading this on Fark.com
Same deal here right before they spilled beer on the server.
I hadn’t noticed how old this was, I wonder if they still have the same policy.
This is widely cited and I agree it happened and it’s messed up, but I think it would be more interesting to see some kind of broader analysis of how common this practice is, which I haven’t been able to find solid information on. I’ve seen this a number of times and there are always comments offering speculation on how the system works, and maybe a few anecdotes, but I’ve talked to people who are skeptical that this is a larger phenomenon and I can’t exactly offer anything to prove it to them.
Not sure we should be doing IQ test for Police officers, EQ would be much more important, you’d rather have a slightly less intelligent police officer who tries to relate to you rather than an intelligent quasi sociopath happy to unload their magazine into you at first sign of trouble, wouldn’t you?
Pretty sure IQ testing has a racist origin anyway, so let’s just leave it behind
you’d rather have a slightly less intelligent police officer who tries to relate to you rather than an intelligent quasi sociopath
Sure, I would, but no way the sociopaths at the top would want that
That’s a fair argument, but what I’m saying is more wondering to what extent this is really how things work and how that can be confirmed, than making a statement about how things should be. Every time I see this discussion everything is extrapolated from this single court case about a single police department.
The problem with EQ is that it’s relatively new and there isn’t many out there measuring it in a meaningful way. We know what it is. But like a thermometer measures the temperature someone had to figure what those tolerances are for each temperature. No one has done that with EQ in any meaningful way the last time I checked.
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Great minds and intelligence are different. Many intelligent people like to do the thing they like to do and not think about other things. The NSA is filled with these people. Other smart people think their way into justifying awful things like von Neumann and Edmond Teller who were both strong proponents of hydrogen bombs.
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
Amazing to think that if not for this poor hiring choice we never would have gotten the Wheel of Time series.
Please explain.
Robert Jordan also happens to be the pen name of the author of the Wheel of Time series, and I made a joke about it.
Oh fascinating. Nice one. I’ve not read the books but have seen the series. I didn’t know the author’s name until now.
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Welcome to COSTCO. I love you.
Jordan has worked as a prison guard since he took the test.
Obviously a much more engaging and mentally challenging job than police officer. I’m sure he’ll stay in that job forever because of this.
Or, the getting bored excuse is completely made up bs. Lots of intelligent people dream of having simple jobs where they don’t need to exhaust themselves thinking so they’ll have some brains left for things they actually care about on their free time.
I know it’s hard or impossible over text to identify, but I was being sarcastic :)
I share your sentiment.
Maybe he’s a corrupt power hungry sadist despite being blessed with an above average IQ. Maybe it’s the perfect job for him! Look on the bright side!
Has the average intelligence increased? As in, someone who scored a 100 in 2024 would definitely be smarter than someone who scored a 100 in 1969.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
The short answer is “Yes”. Scores rise about 3-pts every decade and the “Q” is adjusted accordingly. That said, modern education and modern intelligence testing aren’t independent of one another. It is very possible to train for an IQ test and improve your score (a thing that was originally argued as impossible when these tests were formulated). And - both consciously and unconsciously - we’ve geared our education system around improvements on standardized exams.
There’s also a host of environmental improvements - better nutrition, fewer diseases, less heavy metal poisoning - which all contribute to higher cognition. These latter factors are suggested in no small part thanks to a leveling off of the Flynn Effect in later years, both thanks to marginal declines in all of the above and thanks to the diminishing returns once individuals reach peak performance.
But intelligence testing is also a very sketchy and misunderstood field, with lots of scams surrounding its practical application and enormous stigmas associated with any population that scores “below average”.
Much like polygraph testing and dowsing (yes, American police still use dosing rods), its a methodology that police seem to cling to long after it has worn out its usefulness in practical terms.
In general, yes. Average IQ increases by a point or two every few years, so the people who design the tests need to consistently create harder and harder tests to maintain a good baseline.
It’s a large part of why many people say IQ is a bad metric for intelligence; It really just tests your ability to solve problems within the context of your upbringing and life experience. A carpenter or machinist who constantly uses geometry in their day-to-day life will breeze through any geometry-based questions, for instance. And as jobs have become more complex and efficient, people have gotten better at basic problem solving.
Average IQ cannot increase or decrease. The test is calibrated so that 100 is always the average. It’s for this reason and many others that comparing historical testing data is difficult.
In the revised version of his book “The mismeasure of man” (about biodeterminism and measurement) Gould was asked why he didn’t draw the obvious comparison between IQ and phrenology. His answer was that such a comparison would be unfair… to phrenology. The methods of phrenology were bunk, but it’s theory (that different regions of the brain were responsible for different functions) was sound. IQ fails both in methodology and theory.
I understand that, but that means that the test has to be adjusted, which means that the middle point keeps moving. Similar to currency: $100 is $100, in 1920 or 2024 they are the same, but they also aren’t the same. Our current IQ would yield a higher score the further we go into the past, and a lower score as we travel to the future.
Just cast LeadBeGone!! on a country, and watch the IQ rise.
Aptitude tests aren’t measures of education.
No, but human intelligence increases over time. Just wondering if it’s been long enough since the invention of the test.
Not applying to become a cop in the first place is the ultimate intelligence test
What’s your alternative to having cops?
Transformative justice
I didn’t get a job I applied for a few years ago for a broadly similar reason. Also they thought (correctly) that I didn’t know a lot about web development.
So I was rejected for being simultaneously overqualified and underqualified.
Lol apparently judges are selected for low iq as well
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