Jun 20, 2022 21:00:00

The story of a person who was refused hiring because he was 'too smart to be a police officer'

In 1997, then-46-year-old Robert Jordan filed a complaint against the city of New London, Connecticut, for being denied hiring because he was 'too smart to be a city police officer.' In 2022, the 25th anniversary of the complaint, news site MEL Magazine describes Jordan's story.

Robert Jordan, the Man Who Connecticut Police Said Was'Too Smart To Be A Cop'

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/robert-jordan-too-smart-to-be-a-cop

Jordan, who took the city police recruitment test in 1997, took an intelligence test called the 'Wonderlic Personnel Test and Scholastic Level Exam' conducted by a company called the Law Enforcement Council of Southeastern Connecticut. Jordan scored 33 points, compared to an average of 21 points for other test takers in this test.

However, despite scoring such a high score, the city police at the time forgot to hire Mr. Jordan. Mr. Jordan said that he thought that the hiring was postponed because of the age of 46 at that time. The age of 46 was likely to be the oldest of the hires. However, when dissatisfied Jordan filed an administrative litigation with the Connecticut Human Rights Opportunity Commission, he learned that the real problem was the result of an intelligence test.

Mr. Jordan was

told by the then deputy mayor Keith Harrigan, who oversees recruitment, that 'people with too high IQ do not want to hire.' In fact, Jordan's test said, 'It's self-defeating to simply hire high-scoring employees, because qualified candidates quickly get bored of challenging jobs and quit.' From this, the employer thought that 'applicants who got a high score in the intelligence test will soon get tired of the police work and will leave the police', and adopted Mr. Jordan. It wasn't.

MEL Magazine also estimated that 'police are spending a lot of money on training new police officers and can't afford to spend money on training applicants who would quit police soon after leaving the police academy. I guess. '

Jordan has filed a complaint that the city police have violated Article 14 of the Constitutional Amendment, 'Right to Equal Protection,' but the court upheld the police's allegations. 'There is a good reason for the police to ask for a police officer who is not too smart.' Jordan appealed the ruling, but in 2000 the Second Federal Court of Appeals in New York upheld the Connecticut District Court's ruling, and Jordan was defeated again. The appeals court ruled that 'the same criteria were applied to everyone who took the test, so the protection of Mr. Jordan's Fourteenth Amendment was not violated.'

The most dissatisfied Mr. Jordan was, 'It doesn't matter if a wise police officer is really likely to leave law enforcement, it's not a question of whether Jordan's constitutional rights have been violated,' the court said. It was a decision. The appeals court's decision states, 'Even if there is no statistically proven strong correlation between high scores on the Wonderlic test and turnover due to low job satisfaction, the material produced by the test maker. Based on a similar letter sent by the Law Enforcement Council of Southeastern Connecticut, he concluded that it was sufficient to believe that the city had such a relationship. ' Even if there was no strong evidence of a relationship between intelligence and turnover, it was determined that 'the city believed that this test was valid' was important. As long as that belief applies equally to test takers, it has been determined that constitutional rights are not infringed.

'This is like pushing a formal judgment on a kind of classism in the United States. I was just surprised. I was offended by law enforcement as a whole,' Jordan told reporters at the time. There is no relationship between basic intelligence and job satisfaction or years of service, 'he said, but he finally accepted the decision.

But there were some bright signs for Jordan. After the test failed, Jordan had a new job at the Corrections Bureau, at least proving that he wasn't too smart to be a prison officer.