Something to Keep in Mind

I don't favor using a draft to populate the U.S. military, but sometimes I wonder if something like a draft might not be a good way to select our police forces.

The self-selection process we currently use, it seems to me, has a pretty high likelihood of resulting in officers who are enamored of having power over other people. And then there's the thing about how at least some police forces won't hire people who are too smart.

"Too smart" doesn't mean genius-level IQ, either. In the case linked above, the applicant had scored 125 on the test. The New London, Connecticut, police department — which won in court — said that it didn't want officers who would get bored with the job.

What part of interacting with the public to protect and serve them would be boring to someone with an IQ of 125? Let me guess, it's not that part of the job that's boring, it's the bureaucracy and need for mindless followership. Where does New London get its leadership and its detectives from, I wonder? Is there no room for advancement on the force?

I'm not a fan of the marching morons vision of societal change, but it seems like the New London police department subscribed to it. I wonder how widespread this practice is across America's police departments?

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Note: Police departments don't administer IQ tests per se; scores on the tests they do give are correlated to IQ scores.