LSAT 2 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q3

LR Question 3 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: More than a year ago, the city announced that police…

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: The excuse about resources being tied up fighting drug crime is not true.

REASONING: The police are still writing as many speeding tickets as ever. Therefore they haven’t diverted any resources to fighting drugs.

ANALYSIS: Have you ever had a co-worker fired, and had to do part of their work as well as your own? Well, the same could happen with police officers. Perhaps now each officer cracking down on speeding now has to write ten tickets per day instead of eight. It’s easy to write tickets if you start being stricter.

___________

1. It’s not necessary that everyone is able to shift to fighting drugs as long as some people could shift to fighting drugs.
2. Maybe drug related crime is very serious. The only important issue is whether or not the chief has actually diverted resources to fighting drugs.
3. The argument does not hinge on which issue is more important. What matters is whether the chief actually did shift resources.
4. The argument is actually assuming the opposite of this.
5. CORRECT. Yes. The argument’s only evidence is that the number of traffic tickets stayed the same. But if the police could write the same amount of tickets with fewer resources, then the argument is no good.

Recap: The question begins with “More than a year ago, the city announced that police”. It is a Necessary Assumption question. Learn how to master LSAT Necessary questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.