Q1 - Police chief: This department's officers

[Dkrajewski30]

I selected D for this originally. No idea how I fell for it, as it's a fairly common trap in LR. It doesn't matter what so and so believe - is it true or not?

Anyway, upon review, it's clear to me why B is correct. After all, if the nightclub patrons would suspect that anybody who refrains from drinking is a police officer, then of course the exception to the rule of 'No police officers are allowed to drink' is justified. If there is no such exception to the rule, then the entire operation of undercover investigating is undermined. The officers aren't exactly undercover if everybody's thinking to themselves that the guys aren't drinking are officers. What's one aim when going undercover? Fitting in.

But I still also find A appealing. Maybe others do as well. So I thought this rundown of A could be helpful to me and others.

There's no doubt that B is a better answer, and it provides a more concrete reason for justifying the exception. But if only the very experienced police officers are permitted to work undercover, then it would seem we'd have more reason to justify the exception. That said, I see why A is wrong. It's inadequate, because we have to bring in too much information to assume that very experienced officers can hold down their liquor better and that it doesn't inhibit their work to any significant degree. We can just as reasonably go the other way with the assumption, in assuming that the very experienced officers are jaded with their jobs, and so are more likely to abuse alcohol! Or maybe these officers think they have nothing to lose due to enhanced job security, so they drink recklessly. Who knows? Given this uncertainty, A isn't the best justifier.

Even still, could this not be a right answer to a question like this? Yeah, it's not that good, but often times on the LSAT, you'll see a question where all the answers suck and it's the one that sucks least that wins out. It seems to be a very commonsense assumption that more experienced people merit our trust relative to less experienced people. So theoretically, could this not justify the exception if B didn't provide a better answer?

[tommywallach]

Hey Dkra,

Believe it or not, it's very rare for there to be two "correct" answers, with one beating the other one out by a hair. Pretty much there are four wrong ones, and one right one. Every time.

(A) Why would experienced officers be allowed to drink? Drunkenness doesn't affect experienced people more or less than inexperienced people. The level of your experience wouldn't affect your ability to work drunk, unless you had experience working nightclubs before. But that makes no sense, because how could you get the experience in the first place?

(B) CORRECT. You can't work undercover if people don't believe you're not a cop!

(C) This is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how big the operation is.

(D) What police officers believe is irrelevant. They probably think they could be drinking all day every day! It's what their BOSSES (and maybe the public) thinks that matters.

(E) Public awareness is irrelevant.

I'm not trying to say that multiple answers aren't tricky. But that doesn't mean they could ever be correct.

Hope that helps!

-t

[WaltGrace1983]

Just wanted to add why I personally eliminated (A). The stimulus is about police officers as a whole, a population of people. We don't really care about the specific police officers within that whole. We don't care if the people who are given these assignments are experienced, inexperienced, purple, or 8' tall. We are trying to justify the exception to the police department's rule for all of the police officers.

(A) just gives us a little bit more information on who these police officers are, but we don't care about that! We care about how drinking applies to the police officers' role.

(B) provides this. If there was no exception, night club patrons would expect that those ~drinking were police officers. Looks like their cover is blown!

In addition, (C) is very similar to (A) - we don't care about obtaining more information about who or how many undercover ops. there are!

[dortizsj]

WRT answer B. I've gone into nightclubs and only drank club soda. This starts off with "Many people ..." - which I think is more than 1, so it could be two people suspect I am a cop because I don't drink? That doesn't make sense. There must be better reasoning.

[snoopy]

WRT answer B. I've gone into nightclubs and only drank club soda. This starts off with "Many people ..." - which I think is more than 1, so it could be two people suspect I am a cop because I don't drink? That doesn't make sense. There must be better reasoning.

You're adding your own assumption. Just because you drank a non-alcoholic drink doesn't eliminate the possibility that someone else won't think you're a cop. The correct answer should demonstrate the advantages of drinking or the disadvantages of not drinking in order to explain why there is an exception. Remember, this is a Strengthen question with a bit of a Explain the Paradox flair. We're just trying to find any answer that would help the argument even a little bit. I'm not sure what answer you chose, but all the other answer choices do not strengthen.

B: If some people at the club suspect that those who aren't drinking at the club are cops, then that defeats the purpose of being undercover. Back to your point of you drinking club soda at a club (lol club soda at a club; sounds like a dad joke). The perception of the nightclub patron matters. If a cop wants to be undercover, they want to eliminate the possibility of somebody suspecting they were a cop. If a criminal thought you were a cop because you didn't have booze, it proves the point that the possibility exists - that possibility being criminals suspect non-alcoholic drinkers to be cops. Hence, B provides an explanation for what disadvantage a cop might encounter if they did not drink.

[IrisH894]

WRT answer B. I've gone into nightclubs and only drank club soda. This starts off with "Many people ..." - which I think is more than 1, so it could be two people suspect I am a cop because I don't drink? That doesn't make sense. There must be better reasoning.

You actually pointed out a very legitimate concern. In strengthen questions we are supposed to find the strongest/most powerful answers, so it's rare for an answer choice that starts with "many" or "some" to be the correct answer. But this is one of those instances, and I think it's important to remember that weak numerical terms like "many" or "some" are not absolute red flags in strengthen questions. LSAT would be too easy if that was the case, and it clearly isn't.

For me, I eliminated every answer choice except B and D, and it was ultimately a choice based on weighing the prospective strengths of these two answers. Notice that we're asked to justify the exception, not explain the exception, and while police officers' belief may help to explain the formation of the rule, we prefer stone cold facts when it comes to justifying it. Therefore, D is not very strong, because like one of the above posters said, it doesn't really matter what the police officers think, what really is the case is what matters. B, in comparison, offers a pretty valid reason why police officers should drink in night clubs, and is comparatively stronger than D.

A few words about why A is wrong. It needs too many assumptions. Notice that A implicitly assumes that nightclub undercover is the only type of mission where only very experienced police officiers participate. For all we know, another branch of the police department's work could require the same level of expertise for all of its personnel. If that's the case, it's not really clear why nightclub undercover should be the only exception to the no-drinking rule.