Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
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Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
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Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
#2I definitely had a friend once who was told she had received too high a score for the police job she had applied for. I thought I remember at the time some mention of the rationale being that the police force didn't want people who were too independent-thinking to simply follow orders. Maybe that was just my friend's interpretation though!
Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
#3meaning that at least according to the test, it requires more intelligence to sell insurance than to solve crimes.)
Police do not solve crimes. Police enforce laws. Detectives solve crimes. I would expect that detectives and police officers would be held to different standards.
Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
#4Having independent thought is hard to control in making a force of people. To have a force, an army, a unit of people, they have to respond predicatively to all commands. If you put together a force you must believe without doubt that they will follow your command. Police are selected and conditioned accordingly. The military does this as well, training people to kill, and be killed. In previous engagements having people think twice meant death of themselves or others. You had to condition your units to run out into bullets, one after the other, until you made enough of an advance to kill the enemy or die trying. I don't worry about average intelligence officers, but I do worry about average intelligence commanders, judges, and people in control of these forces. When you join they army they will always place you in the position that most suits your psych test, or will even reject you if needed. How is this different? Don't become a cop, become a detective, become an FBI agent, become a judge, or public defender and volunteer firefighter.
Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
#5meaning that at least according to the test, it requires more intelligence to sell insurance than to solve crimes.) Police do not solve crimes. Police enforce laws. Detectives solve crimes. I would expect that detectives and police officers would be held to different standards.
The pool of detectives is typically pulled from line police, isn't it? By restricting the IQ of those enforcing the laws, you're creating a poor candidate pool for detectives.
Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
#6I definitely had a friend once who was told she had received too high a score for the police job she had applied for. I thought I remember at the time some mention of the rationale being that the police force didn't want people who were too independent-thinking to simply follow orders. Maybe that was just my friend's interpretation though!
A common argument is that they think intelligent people will become bored with the job and eventually leave it.
It is certainly possible to be "overqualified" for many sorts of jobs for exactly this reason, but the police are the only ones that I have ever heard of that actually test candidates to weed out those "easily bored" smart people. Other companies, for some reason, get by just by excluding people with impressive resumes.
Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
#7sherlock
Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
#8I definitely had a friend once who was told she had received too high a score for the police job she had applied for. I thought I remember at the time some mention of the rationale being that the police force didn't want people who were too independent-thinking to simply follow orders. Maybe that was just my friend's interpretation though!
I've heard that from others and got a similar impression after I did well on the ASVAB (US military aptitude test) and was speaking with a recruiter. It's possibly true, but it's also possible (and a less malicious explanation) that they just know you won't be happy in the position yourself and may not perform well as a result. In hindsight, the career path I was interested in in the military would have made me very unhappy, and although I thought the program they were steering me toward was quota driven, I suspect I actually would have done better in that program and been more interested.
Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
#9I definitely had a friend once who was told she had received too high a score for the police job she had applied for. I thought I remember at the time some mention of the rationale being that the police force didn't want people who were too independent-thinking to simply follow orders. Maybe that was just my friend's interpretation though!
Could just be the same logic that gets used in any job search quite often of "they're overqualified for this role and so will quickly get bored and move on [and I don't have anything more suited to them]", which wouldn't be specific to the police at all.
Re: Can Someone Be Too Smart to Be a Cop?
#10meaning that at least according to the test, it requires more intelligence to sell insurance than to solve crimes.) Police do not solve crimes. Police enforce laws. Detectives solve crimes. I would expect that detectives and police officers would be held to different standards.
Uh, police detectives?