Are dumb cops better than smart ones?

Joseph Farah:

If you don't believe your federal government is actively working to destroy your way of life, to subvert common-sense standards, to further racial injustice and double-standards, to deny individual rights in favor of group rights, just read on and see what is happening right now in Virginia.

The city of Virginia Beach this week reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department – that's the federal agency headed by President Bush's pick of Alberto Gonzales – to lower the standards of math exams for local police recruits.

Why, you ask, would Washington be interfering in the setting of standards for the math examinations of local police officers in Virginia?

Great question. I wish more people were asking simple, logical, incisive questions of this kind. Why, indeed, is the federal government interfering in so many aspects of our lives?

The answer you will get from the Bush administration goes like this: In February, the Justice Department sent a letter to Virginia Beach stating that the police department had "engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination" against black and Hispanics. The only evidence cited were the results of a math exam given to all police recruits. It showed a wide gap between the passing rates for white applicants and the passing rates for blacks and Hispanics.

About 85 percent of white applicants passed the math test from 2002 to mid-2005, while only 59 percent of blacks and 66 percent of Hispanics did.

The Republican-led Justice Department demanded that Virginia Beach end this blatant discrimination and "provide sufficient remedial relief" to previous police applicants who suffered under this kind of oppression. While Washington did not specify how that "relief" should be provided, Virginia Beach got the message.

The city will now allow 124 applicants to be reconsidered – even though they previously failed the math test. The city is also giving those failures $160,000 because they can't add and subtract. Black math failures will be given $128,000 and Hispanic math failures will be given $32,000.

And, in the future, the city will eliminate the standard of a 70 percent passing grade. Under the new standards, if you want to call them that, an applicant must only score 70 percent on the reading and grammar test and score at least an average of at least 60 percent on all three parts of the exam.

Last month, by the way, the Chesapeake, Va., police department got a similar demand from Washington – also based on math standards for applicants. That dispute has not yet been resolved – meaning Chesapeake has not yet surrendered to the illogical, irrational, racist demands of the federal government to dumb down its police force.

You get the picture? If blacks and Hispanics can't do math, then math tests are racist. That's the conclusion of Alberto Gonzales, the man who likes to refer to himself as the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the country.

If the federal government can do this to a local community, what's to prevent the federal government from forcing private employers from subverting their standards for employment? I wonder if Gonzales will next take a look at the National Basketball Association to determine why there is such a shortage of white men and no women whatsoever? Are the jumping and dunking standards too high? Are they preventing white men and women from gainful employment and seven-figure salaries?

This is absolutely mind-boggling.

It's too late for Virginia Beach to take a principled against this kind of insanity, but I hope other communities faced with these kinds of racist, discriminatory demands by the federal government tell the Justice Department where to go.

Do cops need much IQ?

U.S. Justice Department Demands Dumb Cops

Is math racist?