Exactly, police departments do want to hire smart people, just not too many and they have to be the right kind of smart. My brother is a cop and an inspector (

Exactly, police departments do want to hire smart people, just not too many and they have to be the right kind of smart. My brother is a cop and an inspector (detective for you in the US). He's smart but not at all bookish. So he's got the right "cop" personality and the fact that he was smart was a good thing. Now that he's hiring cops, he's careful to only hire "smart" cops if he has a sergeant position opening up in a few years or if he's ok with them moving on to a new department in 3-5 years. My uncle was a "dumb" cop for 25 years. He was quite happy writing tickets and arresting people for the bulk of his career. He only took a sergeant's job when street work got to hard on him physically.