The Police Academy Movies Were Only Slightly More Absurd

The city of Virginia Beach is accused of discrimination against African-American and Hispanic police recuits because of the results of math exams...

Under a consent decree filed Monday in federal court in Norfolk, the city will change the way it scores the police entrance exam.

The Justice Department had complained that the math portion of the exam had an adverse effect on minority applicants and unfairly excluded them from being hired.

The city will offer to let 124 black and Hispanic former applicants resume the hiring process. Those recruits failed the math test between 2002 and 2005 but would have passed under the new standards.

...After an 18-month investigation, the Justice Department found that the police force did not reflect the diversity of the city’s population because of how the math test was graded.

The Justice Department claimed that the test’s pass-fail system had a disproportionate effect on minorities because the passing rates for blacks and Hispanics were less than 80 percent of the passing rate for whites.

From 2002 to mid-2005, about 85 percent of white applicants passed the math exam, compared with 59 percent of blacks and 66 percent of Hispanics.

Under the old standard, Virginia Beach required all recruits to score 70 percent on each of three written tests for reading comprehension, grammar and spelling, and math.

The Justice Department questioned whether math is relevant to the daily duties of a police officer. The city agreed to eliminate the 70 percent cutoff score for the math part of the test.

Under the new standard, an applicant must score at least 70 percent on the reading and grammar parts of the test and score an average of at least 60 percent on all three parts of the exam. The new scoring method will take effect as soon as next week, when the next exam will be administered.

...The city will give 124 applicants a chance to resume participation in the hiring process. Of that number, the city has committed to hiring at least 15 – three Hispanics and 12 blacks – who complete the application process. Those recruits could begin the Police Academy sometime in 2007 or 2008.

“I hope that we get more than 15 because we have tried to diversify,” Police Chief Jake Jacocks Jr. said.

(hat tip: John Derbyshire over at the Corner) Okay, this drives me nuts. Look, I think affirmative action is wrong on principle, but this isn't even affirmative action -- it's just practically insane.

I generally agree with the contention that we're not particularly concerned with the math skills of police officers, but here they're essentially lowering the standards for nothing more than the purpose of making sure we get an appropriate number (a quota, if you will) of minority police officers. To me, that's effectively an insult to minority applicants. At the same time, it's a decision to let people you didn't think were qualified -- both whites and minorities -- join the police force. Great -- we're now accepting underqualified cops, regardless of color. I feel so much safer now.