Idiocracy

Eric "Neutral, leaning towards favorable" Holder's Justice Department, already on record as showing overt racial bias by refusing to prosecute minorities who commit voter intimidation offenses, is apparently forcing the Dayton, Ohio Police Department to hire certain police recruits who failed the admissions test because "not enough African-Americans passed the exam".

Justice, seemingly based on criteria pulled straight out of their collective rear end, has arbitrarily imposed new passing scores of 58 and 63% on the department's two-part exam instead of 66% and 72%, respectively.  We imagine those esoteric benchmarks were picked to allow the maximum number of minorities to be included in the new cutoff, but then again we're cynical like that.

Does anyone else besides us see a bit of a problem with giving firearms, TASERS, official arrest powers and other serious responsibilities to people, whatever skin tone they happen to be, who have officially proven themselves to be intellectually unfit for the job?

This particular situation is so ludicrous that even the Dayton police union and local NAACP branch, two organizations historically approving of such "affirmative action" measures, are speaking out against the overbearing pressure from the Feds:

"'It becomes a safety issue for the people of our community,' said Dayton Fraternal Order of Police President, Randy Beane. 'It becomes a safety issue to have an incompetent officer next to you in a life and death situation.'"

"'The NAACP does not support individuals failing a test and then having the opportunity to be gainfully employed,' agreed Dayton NAACP President Derrick Foward."

Well, the peasants who live in Dayton now have to worry about 258 such people who now because of Holder's meddling will soon be unleashed into their community, according to the article.  It certainly will be interesting to see how many officer-misconduct lawsuits will be filed against that department in the next few years.

As we've noted in the past, police departments often seem to express an interest in recruiting officers who aren't particularly bright, as those people are presumably able to be easily led and talked out of thinking for themselves.  Here's an agency that actually wants smart cops on their force and now they're told they have to hire a bunch of unqualified people in order to fulfill some sort of mandated quota?

By the way, since when is it the Imperial U.S. Government's (and by extension Eric Holder's) business who a local government entity decides to hire or not hire, especially in the absence of a legitimate complaint from someone claiming racial bias?