CITY COUNCILWOMAN WANTS OAKLAND PD TO HIRE DUMBASS BLACKS

Desley Brooks wants Oakland PD to lower the passing score to 42 for its written applicant exam so that more blacks will qualify to become cops

Police Magazine reports that Oakland city councilwoman Desley Brooks wants the city to hire more blacks as police officers. She is upset that only 20 percent of Oakland’s police force is black when blacks make up 28 percent of the city’s population. Brooks is asking Oakland PD to lower the passing score to 42 for its written applicant exam so that more blacks will qualify to become cops.

A passing score of 42? Why even have a written exam at all? Oakland PD had already lowered the passing score to 45 so that more blacks would pass the exam.

Brooks would like to see the exam eliminated from the officer selection process because she found out that even with a passing score as low as 45, blacks “fail the written exam more often than they fail the physical abilities test.” She wants Oakland Pd to “allow applicants to take a course in its place.”

Take a course in place of the written exam? What kind of a course? How about a course in how to kick ass and take names? What Brooks wants Oakland PD to do is hire dumbass blacks as cops.

State law enforcement commission consultant Alex Blaylock warned that “the Oakland PD will risk hiring officers who cannot fill out an incident report or understand the very laws they are supposed to enforce if they lower standards further.”

With a passing score of only 45, I don’t see how those dumbasses can do that now.

I’ve taken two police applicant exams and passed them easily. In each case, the minimum passing score was 70. Did I pass those exams because I am so smart? No, no! I passed them because anyone with a decent high school education should have passed those exams. The only part I found hard was the memory retention part where after being shown several mug shots with a description of the subject, you were given those descriptions later in the exam and asked to match them up with the correct mug shot.

Ask any cop what he dislikes most about his job and he’ll likely tell you it’s writing those damn police reports. And yet, those reports are crucial to good police work and to the successful prosecution of criminals.

During the probationary field training phase it is not uncommon for a police agency to discover that it has recruited an applicant who cannot write acceptable police reports. Because of all the expense and time expended in the police academy, the recruit who cannot write intelligibly is usually retained rather than dismissed.

Police agencies can do something about those poor writing skills. The Riverside County (California) Sheriff's Department, had a unique way of weeding out applicants who were unable to express themselves well enough to write acceptable police reports.

After submitting an application and before being administered any tests - written, physical, psychological, polygraph - applicants were required to come into the recruitment office to write two one-page essays. In one essay the applicant had to write why they wanted to become a police officer and in the other essay the applicant had to describe the duties of a police officer.

The two essays would then be evaluated by a committee of officers to see if the applicant expressed himself well enough to write acceptable police reports. (Punctuation and spelling were not considered in the evaluation.) If the essays indicated that the applicant would not be able to write intelligible police reports, he/she was informed that his/her application had been rejected. He/she would be encouraged to take remedial writing courses at a local community college and upon completion of the courses, resubmit an application.

A significant number of applicants were rejected in this way. That allowed RCSD to save the time consuming and expensive tests and background checks of applicants who would be unable to write those all-important police reports intelligibly. And while the Al Sharpton types will scream that the writing tests discriminate against minorities, those essays are entirely race and gender neutral.

Retired Riverside County Sheriff Cois Byrd says, “It's a very simple, but honest test.” And he corrected me by adding, “’terribull spellink’ does count, but minor errors are not a cut factor.”

In my experience and my research I have yet to come across a program that beats Riverside's for weeding out unqualified applicants without depending on the usual testing, background checks, etc.

Oakland PD would be wise to adopt Riverside’s method of weeding out dumbass applicants, both whites and minorities, but councilwoman Desley Brooks would throw a fit and never stand for that.