Well, of course when I said “nobody” I was being hyperbolic. And should have know that this being the Dope there would be plenty of anecdotes about the exceptions.
But your girlfriend and pkbites friend should be the exceptions that the HR manager (or whoever is doing the hiring) should be trying to weed out. It was just my opinion that an IQ test would be a poor indicator. Maybe I’m just plain wrong about who applies for jobs as a cop. Maybe it’s not the career choice I made it out to be.
But, ultimately, as gdave points out, it’s probably only removing a very small number of candidates anyway. So, maybe it’s useful in it’s own way.
Yeah, well she didn’t pursue it so who knows what might have happened. She may well have been culled, though they should probably have already done that.
Like I posted earlier, there are other factors considered. Using just IQ would be pointless. There are a lot of factors used to try to weed someone out. Whether or not they’ll stay for the long haul is just one of them.
Biggest problem right now is, nobody wants to be a police officer now days. Departments are having a hard time getting people to apply in the first place.
This means that of the people that do apply, some that would otherwise get weeded out for some issues are being accepted. In the end this may mean there are inferior people patrolling the streets.
The biggest problem with not enough people applying is that those of us on the job are getting slammed with overtime. After I retired as a Dep I was offered full-time with a department I had been working part-time for already on the side. I accepted full-time so that eventually I could take another pension. But the huge amount of OT we’ve been getting is messing up my personal life and a business I own. We’re a medium sized department and we need either 8 full timers or 6 full timers and 4 part-timers. That’s a lot for a department our size. If they don’t start covering all these empty shifts I am definitely taking my second retirement in November of '2022. Overtime is expected but it’s been nuts the last 18 months.
Yeah. too much overtime is a sure path to disaster in any business. It sucks that you have to go through that.
Law enforcement in the US is going through a sea change, right now, so I’m not surprised it’s having an effect on who’s applying. As you may be aware, I’m one of those “get rid of the police” persons. But, leaving departments severely short staffed is in no one’s best interests. If we’re going to continue to have police forces, they need to be at their best. Well rested, and content. Overtime is always a consideration, but if a department (in any industry) can’t get it’s job done, regularly, in 40 hours then you either need more people or less job.
I hope things turn around for you and your department one way or another.
ps: I have a problem, in general, with IQ tests so it may be coloring my responses in this debate.
Thing is, I don’t have to go through it at all if I don’t want to. I retired with a pension of 68K and insurance. I also have a business that grosses me about $156K annually. Plus I’m over 60 which means I can dip into my deferred compensation plan which is just shy of $2 million.
I had been working here part-time for many years back in the day when part- timers could still get on the state pension system if they worked over 600 hours in a single year. When the state did away with that I had a choice of continuing to work part-time with no further accruement to the pension, retire from that position and take the pension I had accrued, or accept full time and get vested in a full time pension after 10 years, which is up next year November. It’s a different pension system from my county pension so I can legally double dip. Between my part-time years and full time years it’ll be an additional 90K based on my highest 3 years salary. After I qualify for it next year the decision to retire permanently will be based on how much overtime they’re hammering me with. I might just take the retirement and go somewhere else part-time to keep my certification active.
I admit I’m a bit institutionalized when it comes to the job. My wife thought I was nuts when I accepted full time again.
Not an expert at all, but I have a good friend who went into law enforcement about 25 years ago when his construction business ran into rough financial straits (he was around 27 at the time.) He’s a patrol sergeant in a town of about 15,000 and has been for many years, he made Sergeant by his 7th or 8th year–most officers in his department never attain the rank.
HIs department for a city of that size has 26 sworn officers. About 20 are in Patrol and 6 are detectives–that 6 includes the Lieutenant of the Detective division who is also “Chief of Detectives”, and who also does field investigations. The Detective Division also has a Sergeant and then 4 regular detectives, patrol where my friend works is divided into four shifts, each shift is lead by a Sergeant (one of which is one of my friends.) But the shift Sergeants aren’t like the Sergeants in NYPD Blue who hang out at a desk in the station house, my friend generally is on patrol most of his shifts out in a squad car. He will often take “lower intensity” tasks so that he’s available to respond to one of his Patrolmen if they need a supervisor, but the city isn’t so big they can pay a Sergeant to sit around chilling in a desk during a Patrol shift. So in that Department you have 26 sworn officers (not including the Chief), 1 Captain (the head of the Patrol Division is a Captain), 1 Lieutenant (head of the Detectives), and 5 Sergeants (1 detective and 4 Patrolmen), so 19 Patrolmen to 7 officers. In my buddy’s words “many guys join the department working as regular officers in Patrol, and spend their entire careers there.”
Note that every officer candidate they hire, they have to pay out of pocket for that guy to attend the State Police academy for LEOs, which costs something like $20,000 or more, unless they’re hiring someone from another department who already had gone through a policy academy. So the cost to the Department, for a city of that size, is huge if someone is hired on and quits in a year or two.
By buck private, yes, I mean the rank of police officer. Statistically most never get past that rank even if they are are on special squad or assignment group. During my first career I was just a Deputy for 21 years before I became a Detective, And I had 3 degrees, including a Masters. And I passed the promotion test several times.
On my current department about 10% are ranks above sergeant, including Detectives. If my math is right. But as I posted before we are lacking in the patrol sector. If that is corrected the percentages will change.
Fortunately the majority of cops – dare I say vast majority? – take the job to serve. My main beef is that they’re only human and then one makes an egregious mistake or just, plain goes bad, the rest circle the wagons.