BADoglick posted...Not only is intelligence not a requirement for hiring, it's actually an impediment.
If you read the article the average IQ is 104 putting cops above average for intelligence and the guy who was rejected had an IQ of 125 which is 95th percentile. So really it's more like being dramatically smarter than than the average citizen is a dealbreaker for hiring which is a bit different than saying being intelligent in general.
You could just as easily attribute it to departments worrying about attrition as you could assuming they don't want smart people for nefarious reasons. Extremely smart people tend to have a lot more options than average or slightly above average people and it isn't cheap to train police. Hiring people who will be gone next week when they line up a better job isn't good. It's the same reason why lower skill jobs don't want to hire people with Ph. Ds. Sure it'd be nice if cops could all be patriotic, passionate geniuses, but unfortunately that's never going to be the case.