''Your average dunderhead is not the person you want to try to solve a fight between a man and his wife at 2 A.M.,'' said Nick Checker, 35, a local playwright. ''I'd rather have them hire the right man or woman for the job and keep replacing them than have the same moron for 20 years.'' Millie McLaughlin, 82, the lunch lady at Harbor Elementary School, worries that pupils will think that ''if they study too hard, they won't get a job.''

And Gilbert G. Gallegos, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said that besides reinforcing keystone Kop stereotypes, the city's stance was self-defeating. ''The better the caliber of the police officer, the fewer problems you have in the community.''

Mr. Jordan had run afoul of turnover rates, which have been the subject of decades of study by management theorists. The publisher of the test, Wonderlic Inc. of Libertyville, Ill., has a section in its ''User's Manual'' warning clients about the cost of replacing workers who quit because they become dissatisfied with repetitive work. ''Simply hiring the highest scoring employee can be self-defeating,'' the manual says.

Wonderlic's president, Charles F. Wonderlic Jr., said variations of the 12-minute test used in New London have been given to 125 million people since his grandfather founded the company in 1937. Mr. Wonderlic said hundreds of employers have used his suggested maximum scores to exclude overly qualified applicants for positions where creativity could be a detriment. ''You can't decide not to read someone their Miranda rights because you felt it would be more efficient, or you thought they knew them already,'' Mr. Wonderlic said.

On the other hand, an expert witness for Mr. Jordan was paid $350 an hour for his conclusion that patrol work is ''cognitively complex and intellectually demanding.'' The expert, Frank J. Landy, a psychologist in Walnut Creek, Calif., pointed to the demands of such modern practices as community-oriented policing as an indication of ''the range and challenge of tasks performed by a typical patrol officer.''

MR. Jordan said he would appeal the ruling if his lawyers are willing to continue the case now that he has used up his savings. In the meantime, he is supplementing his insurance business by working for $26,000 a year -- $15,000 less than he would make as a New London patrolman -- as a state prison guard. ''In those dormitories, there's 110 inmates and one of you,'' he said. ''Your mouth better be connected to your brain.''

While those with badges and guns are called New York's finest, they will continue to be New London's fair to middling: New London officials say they plan to keep using the test to fend off smarty-pants.