The US District Court of Appeals in New York just rejected 49-year-old Robert Jordan’s lawsuit claim that he was discriminated against by the New London police department on the basis of his intellect.

In 1996, Jordan took a routine intelligent test in an attempt to become a member of the Connecticut city’s police department. He scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125 but the NLPD was only interviewing people who scored between 20 and 27. Their logic being that someone too smart would get bored easily on the job and wander off or something – thus wasting all that money they spent on training them.

The average score for police officers is 21 or 22 (or a 104 IQ), just above average.

Jordan said this was a form of discrimination and sued. “This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America. I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.” The courts rejected his suit saying that the city had “shown a rational basis for the policy”

Now Jordan works as a prison guard where he can truly excel and hone his intellect.

But if we only have police officers who are ‘just above average’ intelligence and they’re promoted from within to become detectives who we entrust to solve our crimes- Aren’t we in turn endangering ourselves?

(Source: ABC News)