The Glade 4.0

At least in New London CT.

ABCNews



Its old news, but I just ran across it.

_________________
"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I never understood the whole overqualified argument( unless it's just an excuse not to pay people. ) If the person is passionate and good enough to make it though the process how can they be" too good"

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Yeah, you combine the fact that he worked as a prison guard, and didn't "get bored" with the incredible inanity of the ruling, "the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test", you get what should have been a no-brainer win for Jordan. I can only imaging what the ruling if the "standards applied to everyone" would have been: "We only interview white males".

_________________
"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Dumber cops is exactly what the system needs to function as intended. The brighter an individual is, the more they tend towards libertarianism (statistically) and you can't operate a police state when you are depending on it's basic enforcement from individuals who oppose it's operations philosophically. You require unthinking mongos who are willing to do exactly as they are told, unquestioningly, don't hold the pepper spray.

_________________

Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Yes that was sooo helpful

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

It's the same reason more intelligent people get dismissed from jury duty.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Hmm I've been dismissed from jury duty. So if my right is to be judged by a jury of my peers- my peers are those who get dismissed from duty.....

I'm immune from the law!!!!

_________________
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

This is interesting. I guess anti-discrimination laws need not apply as long as you show a rational basis.

So age discrimination is okay because, let's face it -- older employees are going to want higher salaries. And they're just going to retire on you sooner, raising your overhead for training and rehiring.

And if I'm hiring someone for a sales position, it's okay (well, maybe "unwise", but not illegal) to refuse to hire black people because rationally, more customers are going to be prejudiced against black people than white people, so all other things being equal, a white salesperson is going to doing to perform better. Oh, and no more hiring ugly people, either. In fact, I'm openly going to start hiring only young, white, pretty women because damn, do they drive up the sales!

Don't get me wrong; there are times where it is appropriate to discriminate. If I'm hiring someone to be steel worker, it's completely acceptable that I disqualify an applicant on the basis that they're in a wheel chair. The anti-discrimination laws have an exemption for "bona fide" job requirements. As in, if a disability would render you physically incapable of performing the job, you can be discriminated against. To a point, this can be stretched to non-disability discrimination as well. For instance, hiring only women to work a battered women's shelter.

But "you can't work for us because you're too smart" is ridiculous, and I'm amazed that they upheld it. Incidentally, a 125 IQ is in the ballpark of 94-96 percentile. It's smart, but it's not like "holy ****, he's a genius!" smart.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

You actually can get away with hiring only young, pretty women if your basis for business depends on them. Such as if you run a Hooters, or a strip club. Paying older more experienced people more isn't part of a basis of business; you have to pay your employees regardless of what kind of business you're in (barring nonprofit organizations that have volunteers, but they aren't really employees anyhow).

In this case they're rather stretching the "rational basis", since employee retention is also a problem any business (or government agency for that matter) has to deal with, but by the same token they can already have physical fitness standards, and mental ability standards, and there's ultimately no reason there can't be a maximum for either just like there's a minimum beyond the inherent silliness of doing so.

As for the assertion that more intelligent people will get bored and quit, well, that's what the interview was supposed to be for. Not even interviewing candidates because they're overqualified is rather silly. However, this occured in 1996, and at that time a lot of the very experienced people that were likely to have been the ones doing the vetting of candidates were products of the 1960s and 1970s and had leftover stereotypes from that era that cops were "supposed" to be an average working guy with a high school education, and be reasonably smart, but not excessively so or excessively educated for the most part. The reason was that in the era they came in, a cop was essentially a blue-collar worker and while they demanded common sense and judgement, there was a perception that a "book smart" person lacked those things and wouldn't be able to deal with rapidly-changing situations because they'd want to think about it too much and end up getting themself or their partner hurt or killed because they couldn't react quickly, or couldn't understand how to translate from what they had learned in a book in the police academy to the real world. Essentially, it was very much a high-school like stereotyping of anyone with higher education or high intelligence as too "nerdy" to be able to do the job.

There's been a distinct change in this attitude in the 10 years or so I've been in law enforcement in this regard. In 2002, the oldest (and therefore often the highest-ranking) officers often still thought this way to a degree, despite the demands of local politicians who were wanting better-educated candidates. Some of them also felt threatened by anyone with more education or more mental aptitude, especially those who weren't so much older but had been hired and promoted because they "fit in" (and the smaller the department, the bigger a problem this was). By the time 2008 rolled around when I returned from Iraq and was originally looking at a move to Florida, that attitude had mostly disappeared. The reason, from what I observed, was the economy. More people were applying for police jobs, a lot more, when their own jobs disappeared. Because of this, and because politicians had demanded bonus points on written tests for college education (which did exist in 2002, but probably not in 1996) the top scorers on test were almost all college graduates; that 5% bonus you got was just insurmountable unless you were very, very good on the tests or had some other bonus (typically active military time or prior police experience). This essentially forced departments to start hiring the smart, educated people because they could hardly reject the entire top end of their list out of hand.

This sort of anti-smart-guy prejudice was mostly unconscious, and in most departments would have come out in the interview process, not the testing one. Apparently New London was just especially silly about it, not even interviewing the guy. That's the first time I heard of that. Generally most departments would interview based on the list, but if you were shorter, heavier, wore glasses, or came across as "bookish" that interview was an uphill battle.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I get tired of people always accepting this IQ thing with no questions asked. I'm just quoting the wiki entry here, but I've heard it criticized before.

The reason for not accepting people in the OP is **** stupid though. So much so that I think it honestly deserves the "****" I added to it.

_________________
"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn