I agree with you here, that it is striking there isn't a single mention of what members might think. But I also wonder if it's relevant at all. To me, there's no real correlation between intelligence and being a good person. A really smart officer might also know precisely which things he or she can get away with, to the community's detriment.
The idea that "Was he a good cop?" can be answered without asking the community being policed is just a dumbfounding notion, and really puts some urgency behind the question of who is the police serving.
The article mentions they spend 25K to train an officer. Given that police departments have insane budgets, does 25K matter that much? How many intelligent officers leave solely because of boredom and their high IQ? Maybe a handful? The math doesn’t add up here. It sounds like an excuse to weed out people who wouldn’t fall in line.
This sounds similar to the psychological tests given to candidates in various jobs under the pretext of measuring compatibility with job requirements - but the real reason is to find out if the candidate would be obedient, not join unions, not think independently etc.
