Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops

abcnews.go.com

17 points·tswicegood··7 comments

I could understand this if the job was something like assembly line worker, where there might be no potential upward job growth, but for cops can't they advance from street cop to detective?

I'd think you'd want detectives to be as smart as possible.

ABC routes you through their incredibly annoying pitch for their iPad app if you want to read this on an iPad, and even if you can figure out what to click to Just Let Me Read The Fucking Article, they then pop you into an iPad "optimized" version, leaving you with a link that you can't confidently share with anyone or post to social media.

ABC, please, for the love of God, stop doing it wrong.

Already submitted yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3418080

Can someone explain why that one did not make it onto the RSS feed, but this later one did?

The PD in question also bars people who fall below a given test result threshold.

They seem to seek a "sweetspot" where they're smart enough to be valuable additions to the force and not be easily outsmarted by a average people but not so smart they grow bored and quit thus costing the dept time and money.

While I, too, found that part intriguing, the article mentions that the guy has been working as a prison guard since being rejected. Could be that he just wanted to make money by being a police officer and that department missed out on a great hire. Not to mention the fact that the nature of the work can definitely change as long as they're promoting from within.

Thanks for the quick summary.

Obligatory canonical SciFi on these matters:

'Examination Day', Henry Slesar

http://www.thebostonbachelor.com/2008/examination-day-by-hen...

'Harrison Bergeron', Kurt Vonnegut

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com