Transcript

Interview with ROBERT JORDAN

September 12, 2000

CNN Legal Analyst Greta Van Susteren interviewed Robert Jordan on September 12, 2000. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: Hello and welcome to Greta@Law. Robert Jordan is a smart man -- A little too smart for the New London, Connecticut, police department. His application to join the city's finest was rejected because he scored too high on the entrance exam. He sued the city for discrimination, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with the New London police department, saying its hiring policy may not be smart, but it is a rational way to reduce job turnover. Bob Jordan, thank you for joining me today.

ROBERT JORDAN: Thank you for having me, Greta.

GVS: Bob, are you too smart to be a cop?

RJ: Absolutely not. I would worry about being smart enough. I don't think you can be too smart in an occupation like a policeman.

GVS: Take me back, Bob. What happened to you? You took an exam and what was the score?

RJ: I scored a 33 out of a possible 50. It's just a silly, standardized, off-the-shelf intelligence test, referred to as the Wonderlic Test. I believe you have 12 minutes to get as many answers correct -- unless you want to get the job as a police officer in New London -- as possible and I guess an equivalent score is 125 or merely two standard deviations above the mean for the relevant IQ score.

GVS: Now, Bob, the Wonderlic Test -- is that actually administered by the New London police, or is that one you took separately?

RJ: It was a regional exam, so that if you were interested in working for a number of departments, they all drew from this consortium called the Law Enforcement Council. Rather than everybody give their own test, you take one regional test and departments that are interested can draw from those test takers.

GVS: Now according to what I've read, Bob, the New London police only interview those who score between 20 and 27 and you got a 33, and that the average score nationally is a 21 to 22 with an IQ equivalent of 104 and your IQ is 125. What did you say to the New London police when they said, in essence, Bob, you're too smart?

RJ: Well, actually, the person I talked to was the personnel manager and when I inquired as to why I hadn't had an opportunity to at least return some biographical information to them because I understood that they were interviewing people, that's when he told me that, quote, "Listen, Mr. Jordan, we don't like to hire people with a too high an IQ to be a cop in this town." Of course, I was aghast at the philosophy he was espousing and when I asked him to elaborate on why he had made this determination, he suggested that the role of a police officer in society was a very boring, routine, mundane, unchallenging type of position, and someone with any gray matter between their ears would rapidly become disenchanted and leave that type of work for something more exciting like being a personnel manager for the city of New London. (Editor's Note: The New London, Connecticut Police Department declined to comment on the case.)

GVS: So you went to the federal district court, you lost there, you went to the U.S. Court of Appeals, you lost there, and they said that it was, they found that New London had shown a rational basis for the policy and that there was a rational way to reduce job turnover. You're not going to the U.S. Supreme Court, Bob?

RJ: Unless my attorney was willing to do it pro bono, I'm afraid that this is it for me. I'm financially exhausted over all of this, but I might add that there is absolutely no data whatsoever, Greta, to support this so-called rational policy that the Wonderlic Company espouses. In other words, there are absolutely no empirical studies that have ever been, no scientific evidence, no exit interviews that have ever been conducted to prove that intelligent people leave law enforcement disproportionately. I'm sure as a society at large, we'd be happy to hear that fact.

GVS: You also wrote a letter on April 9, 1997 to the president of the United States, Sen. Christopher Dodd, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, and the governor of Connecticut, John Rowland. Have any of those gentlemen responded to you?

RJ: No, they have not. Apparently, no one is interested in having a constituent named Bob, because I have actually written my own personal congressman twice, and I just cannot get a response from anybody. Nobody seems to care about my plight.

GVS: Why do you want to be a police officer?

RJ: I had done the work both on part time, in a municipality, and on a seasonal basis for the state of Connecticut through the Department of Environmental Protection, Law Enforcement in the Parks, that sort of activity. I enjoyed patrol work. I thought I had a real knack of dealing with people, which isn't surprising because I have been selling life insurance since I was 22-years-old. I developed a lot of people skills over the years, and I thought I might like to do it on a full-time basis. It doesn't seem that unreasonable at age 45 to want to have a career change since the spokesman for the most recent state trooper graduating class this summer was a 53-year-old former attorney from Fairfield County. He was chosen by his classmates to be the speaker because he did such an excellent job, I guess, as a candidate for the state trooper in Connecticut. That class by the way, included more ex-nurses and teachers and other highly educated professionals than any other class. I think that you want to encourage people to go into service helping the public, who are educated and flexible enough to adapt to whatever the demands, and certainly in police work you have changes in society, demographics, policing policies, community policing.

GVS: You know, as I listen to you, Bob, I've got to tell you, when I first read of your plight, I thought there must be something wrong -- certainly someone can't be too smart for a job, certainly someone would not be disqualified for scoring too high on an entrance exam. Have you thought about being clever, and go back and take the exam and throw a couple questions?

RJ: You know, if I had little or no pride in myself, if I could shake off the values that were inculcated into me in grammar school where you take a test to select as many correct answers as possible, not the other way around. If I wanted to be a bureaucrat, I guess I could do that, but I'm not going to that. I fortunately was hired by the Connecticut Department of Correction, and I feel a good deal of loyalty toward them now, because at least they gave me an opportunity to serve in a way I think that society gets a good officer from me. And I get to have a living wage and good benefit package for my family.

GVS: Thank you, Robert Jordan, for joining me. Thanks to our viewers for logging on to Greta@Law. For more legal news and commentary, go to CNN.com/Law. And also visit the Burden of Proof home page at CNN.com/Burden.