Can't spell and can't do the maths

but we will give you a gun so you can be a member of the police force?

Our state has a serious shortage of police officers. It is apparently such a serious shortage they are lowering the standard required to pass the entry examinations in spelling and mathematics.

I do not know what the current entrance examinations are like but I suspect the standard is low. I know we are not getting a stream of university graduates into the police force. Nobody expects that. I do however see the police out and about and I have observed them. On rare occasions I have had dealings with them.

Last week I had occasion to go to a major shopping centre some distance away. When I arrived the entrance I had planned to use had three police cars, a fire truck and an ambulance there. There was no activity around these things. There were three police leaning against one of the cars just chatting. 

I would normally lock my bike to the rack next to the entrance. Did I just go to another entrance and then, with some difficulty, make my way to the other end? I decided to ask if the entrance was open.

"Yeah, just go on in." I was told. It was permission but it was hardly what I would have considered to be a "professional" sort of response. It was well meant enough but it almost certainly reflected the level of education of the officer I had asked.  

If we cannot find recruits who can read and write and do basic calculations to a good standard then we need to look at why this is so. We cannot have police relying on spell checkers and calculators or using AI to write reports. That might be even more dangerous than giving them a gun.