hell low level police agencies wont hire people who are very smart blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/01/too-smart-to-be-a-good-cop/ and the higher level police agencies can't compete with the pay rates that corporations will offer to smart people, so in many areas they get the below average people too, especially in their technical departments. Intelligence agencies suck up the real talent, who wants to do undercover operations to bust Joe blow getting his dick sucked by Susie Ho if they can be part of an undercover spy ring and get paid more . Of course there are some exceptions, but the police are not a randomly selected subset of the population, they lean towards the dumber end. edit: Huh that article says cops average IQ is 104 so I guess on average they are actually mildly above average