This is just pathetic. Affirmative Action run Amok

W

Wildcard

Moderator
VIRGINIA BEACH — The U.S. Justice Department has found that the math portion of the Virginia Beach Police Department’s entrance exam discriminates against black and Hispanic applicants.

In a letter to the city released Wednesday, the Justice Department said its findings were based on results of a math test administered to all entry-level police officers.

The Justice Department said it will sue the city if Virginia Beach does not take appropriate measures to end discrimination and provide “sufficient remedial relief” to previous job applicants.

On Wednesday, city officials said they do not discriminate and the math portion of the exam assesses job-related skills.

Police Chief A.M. “Jake” Jacocks Jr. said the city will cooperate with the Justice Department and will not act until it discusses the findings with federal officials. No date has been set.

The hiring practices of the city’s police and fire departments were called into question in 2004 after a study showed a disparity between the racial composition of its population and its police and fire departments.

About 20 percent of Virginia Beach’s population is black and about 5 percent is Hispanic, according to the Census Bureau.

As of January, 15.9 percent of the city’s police officers were identified as minority. About 10.1 percent of the police force is black – an increase from 9 percent two years ago.

The announcement in 2004 of the Justice Department inquiry prompted the

Virginia Beach branch of the NAACP to chastise the city for what it said were unfair hiring practices.

At the time, branch President Georgia F. Allen called on City Manager James K. Spore to resign because of the low number of black city employees.

On Wednesday, Carl Wright, vice president of the Virginia Beach NAACP branch, said, “It is a shame that the Department of Justice had to come in here and say that we see discrimination. Ray Charles could have seen it.”

Wright said the city should have taken action on its own long ago. He said the national office of the NAACP is prepared to take action against the city if the problem is not remedied.

A separate Justice Department inquiry into possible discrimination in the hiring of Chesapeake police and fire employees has been pending since 2004. So far, there is no word on whether it has concluded.

Since the Virginia Beach investigation began, the city has sought to attract a police force representative of the growing minority population.

The city has reviewed the recruiting selection process and made several changes to address the pass-fail rate on the written exam, including adding 10 minutes to the math section and providing a study guide to all applicants.

“We want to increase our minority representation,” Jacocks said Wednesday. “It is important for us to do that. I am not convinced that a simple math test is the cause of our problem.”

The city requires all recruits to score at least 70 percent on all parts of the written exam – the National Police Officer Selection Test.

Between 2002 and mid-2005, about 59 percent of black applicants and 66 percent of Hispanic applicants passed the math test, compared with 85 percent of white applicants, according to the Justice Department letter.

First administered to Virginia Beach candidates in 1998, the test is designed to assess basic skills of a police officer. It is offered to prospective officers in 20 other states, according to the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police.

“This is not a test we developed,” Jacocks said. “We are not looking for rocket scientists. This is a basic math aptitude test.”

One sample question framed a problem in the context of police work: “On Tuesday, Officer Jones worked the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. At 10:55 p.m. he was called to the scene of an accident where he remained until 1:30 a.m. How long past his regular shift did Officer Jones work?”

Charles W. Meyer, the city’s chief operating officer, said it will be easy to address the Justice Department’s findings because they are focused on one specific area.

“We will do whatever we can to eliminate whatever barriers there may be,” Meyer said. “We also want to make sure that we are not discriminating against minority groups to achieve the balance of high standards and recruit qualified police officers.”

The Justice Department said it will delay filing a lawsuit against Virginia Beach until March 7 to give the city time to negotiate a settlement.

Staff writer Jon Frank contributed to this report.

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=99291&ran=84449


One sample question framed a problem in the context of police work: “On Tuesday, Officer Jones worked the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. At 10:55 p.m. he was called to the scene of an accident where he remained until 1:30 a.m. How long past his regular shift did Officer Jones work?”
Click to expand...

If someone can not answer this question. Do we really want him carrying a badge and gun? Pathetic.


I hate people that think society OWES them something.
 
I've survived a lot of years of Affirmative Action just fine, thanks, so I don't care one way or the other.

But I just HAVE to ask. What the hell does a policeman do with math?
 
.......MATH is discriminating? Maybe against those too dumb to do basic math, but come on...


I don't like having to earn money - jobs are discriminating against me.



Oh wait, I'm white and male. I'm the one discriminating against others, silly me.:rolleyes:
 
What the hell does a policeman do with math
Click to expand...


Maybe, just maybe, they want people to be able so count. It would not be good for a cop to be asked: "how many robbers did you see?". The reply, "umm".
 
Would you hire an english teacher that couldnt read, write, or speak english just because he/she was black?

People need to stop blaming everything on racial issues. If they cant do math... take a class. Thats what I had to do.
 
I always knew math was racist!! And chemistry, biology, social studies, science... ESPECIALLY English...


:rolleyes:
 
"But I just HAVE to ask. What the hell does a policeman do with math?"

Well, as was pointed out by the sample question, he might have to tell his supervisor how much overtime he put in today.

On a related note, here in California we have a new system whereby high school students have to pass a test to graduate. They have to have the English and math skills of a sophomore. They take the test at least 6 times, starting long before they're seniors, and about 80 percent of students pass on their first attempt. As you have, no doubt, anticipated, the lawsuits have begun...

Tim
 
The problem with math is that there is only one answer.

Too bad that the smartest people in the world consider math the universal language and all of our attempts to communicate with any extraterrestrial life involve mathematical theorems simply to demonstrate our capacity for intelligence.

Maybe we need to phrase the question more like:

"If your mayor had 500 school buses to evacuate the city and each bus could hold 25 people, how many people could be taken out of the city with school buses if Karl Rove chose to ride in with his KKK posse and dynamite the levies again?"

Then again, maybe they couldn't answer that one either.
 
We have a severe racial profiling problem here. A recent state study found that over 60% of the people stopped and checked by police were Hispanic. A number of special interest groups found out and began to press for change and an end to racial profiling.

Nobody mentioned that our valley population is over 90% Hispanic because that would have defeated their raison d'etre.
 
azredhawk44:


"The problem with math is that there is only one answer."

Depends on what you mean by "answer". Math's way more complex than 1+1.




"Too bad that the smartest people in the world consider math the universal language and all of our attempts to communicate with any extraterrestrial life involve mathematical theorems simply to demonstrate our capacity for intelligence."

We who use some of the more heavy-duty math mostly have the attitude that we're trying to use it to help solve problems, not just to show how smart we think we are. Think hurricane modeling.





"Maybe we need to phrase the question more like:

"If your mayor had 500 school buses to evacuate the city and each bus could hold 25 people, how many people could be taken out of the city with school buses if Karl Rove chose to ride in with his KKK posse and dynamite the levies again?" "

I'm not going to get the thread closed by commenting on Karl Rove, but don't make any assumptions about what I think of him. You could be surprised.





"Then again, maybe they couldn't answer that one either."

Actually "they" did answer that question a long time ago. First, they got the simple math part of it. If a storm generates a 20 foot surge, and your berm is 13 feet high, how much higher is the new (surged) sea level than the berm?

Then they did the harder, more industrial-strength math to answer two questions.

1 - If the berm is 13 feet above sea level and the surge brings sea level to 13' and 1" above normal sea level, will the city flood? (yes)

2 - If the berm is 13 feet above sea level and the surge brings average sea level to 10 feet above sea level but with 10 foot pounding waves, will it hold? (no).

So, the math part of things had the right answer.


The political part of things used a certain sort of math too.

The questions became "how much will it cost us to fix this situation, how much will it cost us to not fix the situation, and what's the probability that we'll be caught with our pants down while I'm in office?

Well, that is too many unknowns with too few equations to solve it, so they just guesstimated. And the answer was:

"screw you, we don't care".
 
"What the hell does a policeman do with math?"

If exceeding the speed limit by 20 mph is reckless driving, and if the speeder was caught going 74 in a 55, what does he get charged with?

If a policeman stops a car and there are 104 ounce bags of weed in the trunk, given that there are 16 ounces in a pound, how many pounds of pot does he list on the report?

Do you want more examples?

If nothing else they can calculate if they're being cheated on their overtime checks.

As far as the conclusions reached in the original report...it just doesn't add up. ;)

John
 
I'll add one more thing.

Lately I have met more than my share of policemen. I'm estimating 15 in the last 2 months.

Of the 15, only one has behaved (with me the victim) like he would really rather be somewhere else. He, in my opinion, was a crappy policeman.

Maybe he could solve partial differential equations in his head, for all I know.

I, as a citizen needing help, wasn't particularly interested in the mathematical skills of the other 14.

I just don't think it has anything to do with the job.
 
OK, I'll add yet another one more thing.

john, you said:




"If exceeding the speed limit by 20 mph is reckless driving, and if the speeder was caught going 74 in a 55, what does he get charged with?"

Well, that's a little simpler than subtracting time. Add to that, if it's part of the job, like the overtime calculation, he'll pick it up after a time or two. Besides, when was the last time you saw a cruiser without a laptop in it? All he has to do is run Windows Calculator. Nobody really has any need to be able to do arithmetic anymore.




"If a policeman stops a car and there are 104 ounce bags of weed in the trunk, given that there are 16 ounces in a pound, how many pounds of pot does he list on the report?"

Aside from the fact that people oughtn't be persecuted for crimes that don't have victims, all he has to do is list "104 ounces". The judge has Windows, too.




"Do you want more examples?"

Only if they're ones where the cop has to really use math and can't use a calculator instead.




"If nothing else they can calculate if they're being cheated on their overtime checks."

That would be his personal problem, really.



........

What I am trying to get across is that police NEED a lot of skills. Verbal skills. Personalities that allow them to gain control. Logical and reasoning skills. Enough writing skills to make useable reports. These skills aren't yet replaceable by computers. But math is.

You might be rejecting an extremely effective candidate by needlessly worrying about his math skills.

I say test them for what they NEED to do their jobs and forget the rest.

A detective, by the way, would be a different story. Down here, at least, a deputy/officer and a detective aren't the same thing.
 
"These skills aren't yet replaceable by computers. But math is."

I disagree. True, computers are good at handling the mechanics of mathematical operations, but they need to be programmed first. Or in other words, a real-world problem has two parts: figuring out how to solve the problem, and then crunching the numbers. Number-crunching is the easy part, and a machine *can* do that.

This gets back to what I was saying about California and its new high school graduation test. Apparently police departments have found that they can no longer routinely expect recruits to understand math at the high school level, so they now test for it.

Tim
 
I still contend there is nothing racially biased against blacks and hispanics with math aptitude tests.

Math works the same whether you do it in Japanese, Swahili, Spanish or English.

There is only one correct answer all the way thru basic algebra. Officers rarely need the square root of positive or negative numbers, so for their type of math they are expected to be able to do on the job, there is only one answer.

Basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division word problems are not ratially biased.

They are stupidity biased against people who didn't pay attention in 5th grade math class. I bet 75% or more 5th graders could pass the math section of this particular police candidacy test.

Women are supposedly worse at math than men due to brain differences, whereas men are supposedly worse at multitasking than women for the same reasons. But women aren't jumping on the same bandwagon over 6th grade word problems.

I call BS on any settlement over anyone too dumb to pass an elementary school math test who wants to be a cop.:barf:
 
Facetious mode = on

Q: If Juan and Chantelle are driving 59 in a 55 zone that has been marked as a construction zone and reduced to a speed limit of 45, and you pull them over, what is the amount by which they exceeded legal speed limits?

A: You don't cite them if they aren't white! You beat them down, plant some pot and a gun with a missing serial number, then roadside execute them!

Facetious mode = off

Math doesn't discriminate.
 
invention_45:
Nobody really has any need to be able to do arithmetic anymore.
Click to expand...
That is the MOST rediculous thing I have ever heard, you need to to be able to do that kind of math in elementarry school, that was standard, if an adult is not able to do it he should NEVER be able to be an officer!! Do you think about what you say before you say it.......Definatly putting that kind of power in the wrong hands. You shouldnt even be given a drivers license if you cannot figure out a question like that, those kind of people get a helmet and a digital watch NOT a gun and a badge. I also do not understand how in this day and age it is okay (PC) for blacks to be racist on national media (TV, radio) but not for whites. Because blacks where subject to it forever ago it is now okay for them to act like that in public but not whites??? Ever watch the show Boondocks? Perfect example it is stereotypical and racist towards whites, NEVER would that fly if a white person was even to propose it he would be labeled a racist and a bigot. Society is so hypocritcal it makes me sick, speak proper english then we will give you your own TV/Radio show. Sorry I got of topic, topics like this really get me riled up....Society sucks. And affirmitive action is a joke, just a way to let minories in with less requirements, I could see if they called it ratial equality that would make sense but that is NOT what it is.
 
urbanassault:

Note that nothing I say below or have said means to say that some policemen don't know any math. I'm very sure that some are very good at it.



>>That is the MOST rediculous thing I have ever heard

I'd bet money that's not true.



>> you need to to be able to do that kind of math in elementarry school, that was standard, if an adult is not able to do it he should NEVER be able to be an officer!!

I"ve seen some young officers, but none at elementary school age. Some people take General Math in 10th grade and that's the end of it for them. Most, in fact. And that's from back when I went to an all-white high school. And in the meantime, between then and graduation (and applying for jobs) an otherwise great cop might forget some of it. I've found a lot of people fear math terribly. Maybe it just unnerves them on a test.




>> Do you think about what you say before you say it.......Definatly putting that kind of power in the wrong hands.

Um...I happen to be a master-whiz at real math, not just arithmetic. So if ANYBODY advocates knowing your math, it's me. But to say that lack of math skills should deprive you of power?




>>You shouldnt even be given a drivers license if you cannot figure out a question like that, those kind of people get a helmet and a digital watch NOT a gun and a badge.

Down here, you don't even have to be able to read English (the language road signs are written in) to get a drivers' license. And you almost said there that math should be required to have a gun. You definitely said it should be required to be part of a militia. I don't see any math requirement in the 2nd amendment.




>>I also do not understand how in this day and age it is okay (PC) for blacks to be racist on national media (TV, radio) but not for whites. Because blacks where subject to it forever ago it is now okay for them to act like that in public but not whites??? Ever watch the show Boondocks? Perfect example it is stereotypical and racist towards whites, NEVER would that fly if a white person was even to propose it he would be labeled a racist and a bigot.

I don't watch TV except for the evening news. Haven't for many years. So I can't really comment on that. I can only comment on the blacks I meet socially or in business, whom are few and far between. None have ever referred to the black/white issue in my presence. But other white coworkers have made black/white comments about them when they weren't around.





>>Society is so hypocritcal it makes me sick, speak proper english then we will give you your own TV/Radio show. Sorry I got of topic, topics like this really get me riled up....Society sucks.

Maybe it's just radio/TV that suck. I've done electrical engineering, and I'll tell you an apparently little-known secret about radios and TVs. They all come equipped with this control that says "on/off" or "power". That's for when you don't like what you are viewing/hearing, and it's a VERY reliable part.



>>And affirmitive action is a joke, just a way to let minories in with less requirements, I could see if they called it ratial equality that would make sense but that

I guess I lost something in the cut/paste. Maybe it is time to start doing away with AA. There's been time to catch up for the slavery and the little voting rights problems that blacks were hamstrung with years ago. But it wasn't a joke when it was started. It was an effort to level a very tilted playing field.
 
So let me get this straight: the Justice Dept has put on paper that they think blacks and hispanics are dumber than white folk and in need of a hand-out to become even? And the NAACP is not only not jumping square in the middle of their doodoo for saying so, but agreeing with them?

Color me :confused:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top