A new report on the quality of police in England found that some officers are “barely literate because entry standards are so low.” The author suggests that these standards were lowered to allow for greater numbers of minority officers. However, now the lack of literacy is delaying proceedings and causing problems for judges and lawyers alike.
Tom Winsor, the lawyer reviewing police conditions, noted that officers are now routinely the subject of derision as uneducated and illiterate among lawyers.
There has long been a controversy over lowering standards in affirmative action programs for firefighters and police in the United States.
The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of white firefighters challenging preferential treatment for minorities. Those firefighters recently received $2 million in damages.
I have always opposed the lowering standards for police officers and fire fighters to achieve higher numbers of minority personnel. I favor greater recruitment efforts, but lowering the standards is a poor way to achieve the goal of diversity. It also paints other minority officers in a bad and unfair light.
Source: Daily Mail
Sort of on topic, sort of.
The citizens of Britain have more to worry about regarding their police than that some of them are not good readers:
“Hacking: Met use Official Secrets Act to demand Guardian reveals sourcesUnprecedented move sees Scotland Yard use the Official Secrets Act to demand the paper hands over information”
“The Metropolitan police are seeking a court order under the Official Secrets Act to make Guardian reporters disclose their confidential sources about the phone-hacking scandal.
In an unprecedented legal attack on journalists’ sources, Scotland Yard officers claim the act, which has special powers usually aimed at espionage, could have been breached in July when reporters Amelia Hill and Nick Davies revealed the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone. They are demanding source information be handed over.
The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, said on Friday: “We shall resist this extraordinary demand to the utmost”.
Tom Watson, the former Labour minister who has been prominent in exposing hacking by the News of the World, said: “It is an outrageous abuse and completely unacceptable that, having failed to investigate serious wrongdoing at the News of the World for more than a decade, the police should now be trying to move against the Guardian. It was the Guardian who first exposed this scandal.””
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/16/phone-hacking-met-court-order
Dim and Georgie indeed. “Well. Well, well. Well, well, well, well, if it isn’t little Alex. Long time no viddy, droog. How goes?”
I used to think that changing the tests might be a good idea, but I was so wrong. It’s nice to be charitable (“could you spare me some cutter, me brother?”) but I had to change my mind.
I was cured all right.
Justin
Are you able to report here a question from the test that had the potential to create a bias?
Something like “Who was the wife of King Henry II, and who were their two most famous children?”
When I participate in forums in which police officers are present, and various police issues are discussed, I am often struck by the complex decisions and laws they need to have memorized and understand and in real time deal with in terms of knowing when various searches, arrests, physical actions, weapons use can take place.
I often do criticize police actions, but I don’t minimize the difficulty of their job.
Lowering standards so that officers are barely literate is hardly an act that will improve quaity of police services, or better guarantee civilian rights.
Reminds me more like when Dim and Georgie became police themselves.
Lowering standards is pretty clear. When you have a literacy rate and quality that hinders the judicial process, then you have a major problem. A problem brought on by those who feel an entitlement because they are of a certain ethnic category.
Prof Turley hits it on the head when he talks about how unfair it is to those “minorities” who studied and passed the tests without any changes made. the NY firefighters test just got thrown out last year after an affirmative action suit. Problem is that there were 3 black and 1 hispanic who PASSED and they now have to retake with all of the caucasians because a bunch of their bretheren who were too lazy to put in the work necessary sued and got their way.
“Lowering standards” should be defined better here. Discontinuing the use of arbitrary tests which have a discriminatory effect doesn’t fit the definition despite what right-wingers say.
I’d like to say I agree with the professor….Just like I did on the Huntsman thread….But I am sure I’d be painted as a racist….So, I’ll just observe the thread….
For right now….