Saturday, March 12, 2011

Political correctness trumps public safety


I'm infuriated to see - yet again - the dead hand of political correctness trump reason, common sense and the reality of crime. It seems that, at the behest of the Department of Justice, the city of Dayton, Ohio, is to lower the passing score on its police recruit test, to allow more minority applicants to qualify.

It seems it's irrelevant that less-qualified, less-competent individuals will now be going up against criminals in Dayton; that those individuals will now have to back up officers who've qualified to higher standards in the past, and who'll be (justifiably) skeptical about the ability of their new, less-qualified colleagues to 'watch their six'; and that the public will be (justifiably) concerned about whether their police force is still competent to 'protect and serve'.

The same problem is affecting our armed forces. Because standards have been lowered to allow women to qualify for physically demanding career tracks in the military, the military trainees of today face a far less challenging environment. Consider, for example, this video clip of the obstacle course used in The Basic School of the Marine Corps.







Quite frankly, that's a laughably simple obstacle course. When I did an officers training course in the 1970's, our instructors would have given us all sorts of hard times if we'd dared suggest that they put us through so easy a task. They'd have regarded that TBS course as suitable only for us to do in teams of eight men, carrying a telegraph pole weighing not less than 500-600 pounds - and we'd have to get that pole up and over every obstacle without it touching the ground! Alternatively, they'd have made us tackle it in two-man teams, carrying a balsak (kit-bag) or trommel (steel trunk) filled with rocks or sand, which would also have to be gotten up and over every obstacle without touching the ground. What's more, they'd have weighed them before we started, to make sure each was not less than 100 pounds of deadweight!

I wonder how many military and/or law-enforcement personnel have been killed because political correctness insisted that less-than-optimum people be hired to back them up?





Peter

7 comments:

JC said...

Abd here i was thinking I was a TB stricken weakling. That's what I go through to get to my parked car every motning.

Redneck said...

To be fair, that particular obstacle course is run for time, repeatedly. It's not intended to be that difficult; it's a trifle.

Anonymous said...

All hail affirmative action.

Anonymous said...

It is not the Dayton cops or mayor who want this , from what I have read- it is mandated by the DOJ.

Anonymous said...

I grew up in Dayton, and this is not the first time this has happened.

Antibubba

Stingray said...

What's more, they'd have weighed them before we started, to make sure each was not less than 100 pounds of deadweight!

And it was uphill both ways! And snowing! And there were wolves! And then we had to carry the wolves up another hill!

Stretch said...

Not a new problem. Back in '79 a passing grade for the Washington, DC police dept. was a 40. Out of 100.
I scored a 90-something. No, I wasn't even offered a job.