City Lowers Police Testing Standards Because Not Enough Blacks Passed...

[megimoo]

The original passing scores determined by Civil Service

required candidates to answer 57 of 86 (66 percent) questions correctly on one portion and 73 of 102 (72 percent) on the other. The lowered benchmark requires candidates to answer 50 of 86 (58 percent) questions correctly and 64 of 102 (63 percent) of questions on the other.
snip
The Justice Department’s rejection of the passing scores last month delayed the city’s firefighter’s exam that was slated for April 2. A makeup date has yet to be set for the exam.

The city said it wants to put new hires on the street in both police and fire departments by next year to replace dozens of retirees that have left public safety forces near all-time lows.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/...m-1103409.html

[NJCardFan]

Can you clarify what a low test score means? I doubt that I'm alone in wondering what sort of information we're testing for here. Are we talking about the radio codes and statutes or are we talking about basic skills like a civil service test?

I notice when I am reading the arrest reports online, that there are a lot of misspelled words and incorrect abbreviations, especially in two letter abbreviations for states and countries. They seem to make them up as they go along.

Basic civil service tests. And you should try reading our daily tour reports. Linda #'s would have a field day.

[NJCardFan]

I don't know about most cities but in Tulsa you need a college degree to be a police officer.

You used to need one to be a State Police officer in NJ until...wanna guess?

[noonwitch]

I find it kind of interesting that the NAACP is disagreeing with the DOJ on this issue.


Detroit cops go to the Detroit Police Academy. It's still one of the better training programs out there. I don't know what the standards are, though, beyond a high school diploma. Detroit cops are for the most part decent, but there just aren't enough of them to get the job done.

[NJCardFan]

I don't think there are enough black brain surgeons. I think they should lower the standards for getting into medical school. See how ridiculous a concept this is?

[lacarnut]

I don't think there are enough black brain surgeons. I think they should lower the standards for getting into medical school. See how ridiculous a concept this is?

Yep, we need more affirmative action for surgeons, police officers and gasp even school teachers.:eek: Test score qualifications should be raised to at least 70. Every civil service job promotion I applied for required a score in the middle to high 80's just to get an interview.

[Novaheart]

I don't think there are enough black brain surgeons. I think they should lower the standards for getting into medical school. See how ridiculous a concept this is?

That's amusing, but I really don't see the two as the same.

I think there is a legitimate objective to having an approximately representative police force for a variety of reasons. I think the issue here is how a municipality or profession pursues that.

But come to think of it, your joke has an application. Think about infectious diseases. Many black people in the US and Africa promote conspiracy theories which other black people (and probably some white people) believe. These theories generally maintain that certain contagious and deadly diseases disproportionately affecting black people or Africans are deliberate attempts at genocide by "white people who have a history of killing indigenous people". It doesn't matter if it's true, they believe it. If there are no black doctors, then these people cannot be reached. "Who cares?" might work if the consequence was merely their own demise, but the nature of contagious diseases is that they are rarely confined to groups you might consider no great loss.

So yeah, it's kind of important to have black doctors that black people trust. And it's also important to have black police officers for the same reason. Again, the legitimate aim would be to find and nurture blacks so they qualify for the job rather than lower the standards.

[lacarnut]

That's amusing, but I really don't see the two as the same.

I think there is a legitimate objective to having an approximately representative police force for a variety of reasons. I think the issue here is how a municipality or profession pursues that.

But come to think of it, your joke has an application. Think about infectious diseases. Many black people in the US and Africa promote conspiracy theories which other black people (and probably some white people) believe. These theories generally maintain that certain contagious and deadly diseases disproportionately affecting black people or Africans are deliberate attempts at genocide by "white people who have a history of killing indigenous people". It doesn't matter if it's true, they believe it. If there are no black doctors, then these people cannot be reached. "Who cares?" might work if the consequence was merely their own demise, but the nature of contagious diseases is that they are rarely confined to groups you might consider no great loss.

So yeah, it's kind of important to have black doctors that black people trust. And it's also important to have black police officers for the same reason. Again, the legitimate aim would be to find and nurture blacks so they qualify for the job rather than lower the standards.

It is no joke when you have an incompetent dumb ass as your partner in a life and death situation. Police put themselves in danger on a daily basis. Same is true for the military. If you are too dumb to pass the test regardless of race, he or she should not be hired. Dropping the standards on testing is dangerous and stupid regardless of all the social engineering you seem to espouse.

[Odysseus]

Failed the exam to be a heart surgeon? No prob, we'll just lower the bar.

Remember the Bakke decision? Patrick Chavis was one of the five students admitted under the affirmative action program who had weaker qualifications than Allan Bakke. The end result (thanks to http://www.coloringthenews.com/html/preface.html):

On June 19, 1997, the California Medical Board suspended his license to practice medicine, citing his “inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician.” Finding him guilty of gross negligence and incompetence in the cases of three patients—one of whom had died—California Administrative Law Judge Samuel Reyes said that letting him “continue in the practice of organized medicine will endanger the public health, safety and welfare.” Soon after, the Los Angeles District Attorney announced that Chavis was the object of a criminal investigation.

According to medical board investigators, Chavis had engaged in egregious malpractice while performing liposuction procedures on patients in a body-sculpting practice he had started as a side business after taking a cosmetic surgery seminar in Beverly Hills. For doctors looking for easy cash, liposuction had become a lucrative and largely unregulated business, and Chavis’s New Attitude Body Sculpting had flourished, even in hardbitten Compton. But the four day short course Chavis had attended left him inadequately prepared to handle complications. Patients who lived told harrowing tales of Chavis’s post operative neglect when the procedures he had performed went bad.

After one botched procedure, Chavis stashed a patient in his home instead of admitting her to the hospital. Abandoning her for nearly forty hours, the doctor refused to return the frantic phone calls of the patient, who lost nearly 70% of her blood and was admitted to a hospital with a severe abdominal infection. A second patient told an almost identical story: a botched liposuction, massive internal bleeding, and Chavis’s almost inhuman indifference to her suffering. A third patient was not as lucky. After another botched procedure, Chavis left her in his office for four and half hours, her blood pressure plummeting from severe abdominal hemorrhage, which left his clinic floor puddled with blood. By nightfall she was in cardiac arrest and died while her husband rushed her to the hospital.

Medical board investigators also heard from a doctor who had worked with Chavis. Citing “poor impulse control and sensitivity to patients’ pain,” the doctor gave investigators a tape recording of patients screaming horrifically, with Chavis responding, “Don’t talk to the doctor while he is working,” and, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.” In addition, Chavis refused to take responsibility for anything that had happened to his patients. According to investigators, at one point Chavis said that it was the husband of the dead patient who should be brought up on charges, claiming that he had picked her up and put her into a wheelchair after surgery in violation of procedure. At another point he said he was the victim of a racist medical system that didn’t like to see a black doctor do well.

Despite the fact that the black doctor in question was only admitted to college because the system bent over backwards for him, he still played the race card when he was caught. The victims of this kind of idiocy are, of course, the patients of unqualified doctors, but the other victims are the qualified minority professionals who didn't benefit from lowered expectations and quotas, and who have to overcome the stigma created by those who superficially resemble them, but who are otherwise inept or unqualified for their positions of trust.

This has been going on all over for a long time. It's done for women too.

I submit that since children make up roughly one third of the population, the police, fire departments and teaching professions should immediately hire as many children as possible in order to make up this disparity.

Is a somewhat representative force a legitimate goal?

Around here, police officer is one of the better paycheck type jobs, especially for someone with less than a college degree.

Yes and no. A police force must have members of the communities that it policies, if for no other reason than undercover work. It is also critical that officers know and understand the neighborhoods that they protect. The former requires superficial resemblances, while the latter requires immersion and genuine interest in the community, which is not defined by race, but can appear to be. However, these goods are severely undercut when a force compromises professional values and qualifications in order to fill quotas.

Yep, we need more affirmative action for surgeons, police officers and gasp even school teachers.:eek: Test score qualifications should be raised to at least 70. Every civil service job promotion I applied for required a score in the middle to high 80's just to get an interview.

Several years ago, I was preparing to deploy and we received an officer, MI branch, who had gotten in trouble with her security clearance. She had racked up some debts during a period of unemployment and because of that, her TS clearance was going to be revoked. I was tasked to assist her in drafting her rebuttal. I had her write up the first draft and told her that I would then edit it for format. The document that she gave me was riddled with grammatical and spelling errors and had the worst sentence structure that I had ever seen not written with a spray can on concrete. It was shocking that a captain could get that far without being able to parse a sentence or run spell check. I completely rewrote her appeal and submitted it for her, saving her career. In theater, her NCOIC did most of her work in the office, and I did the daily intel briefings (she mangled English words, much less Arabic, the final straw came when she pronounced "Syria" as "Sur-R-I-uh", with a long I). I had to write her NCOIC's tour award, and I ensured that he got a Bronze Star

[Rockntractor]

You used to need one to be a State Police officer in NJ until...wanna guess?

We have had a few very bad eggs in the Highway Patrol and we recently had a conspiracy in the police force, but in general they are very professional.