Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Easy

PT2 S2 Q3 Explanation

More than a year ago

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsNecessary Assumption

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Full official LSAT questions are available through LawHub. This page provides LSAT Lab's explanation, strategy, and review tools without republishing the full official question.

Stimulus

More than a year ago, the city announced that police would crack down on illegally parked cars and that resources would be diverted from writing speeding tickets to ticketing illegally parked cars. But no crackdown has taken place. The police chief claims that resources have had to be diverted from writing speeding excuse about resources being tied up in fighting drug-related crime simply is not true.

What this question is testing

Necessary Assumption

Conclusion

The author is calling the chief a liar. The chief said: we shifted resources from speeding tickets to drugs. The author says: nope, that excuse is false.

Evidence

The author's only evidence is that speeding tickets are still being written at the same rate.

Evaluate

For that evidence to actually catch the chief in a lie, those two things have to be incompatible — you cannot keep writing as many tickets as ever while also shifting resources to drugs. If the police could somehow do both at once (more efficient officers, hiring extra hands, whatever), the chief's story could still be true.

Goal

The correct answer will say: keeping speeding-ticket output the same is incompatible with diverting resources to drugs. Negate it (you can do both) and the argument falls apart.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
3.

The conclusion in the passage depends on the

Answer choices

  1. Out of Scope1% picked this

    Every member of the police force is qualified to work on combating the

    The argument is about whether resources were diverted, not whether every officer could do drug work. Negation test: even if some officers were not qualified to fight drugs, the chief's claim about diverting resources could still be true or false — that does not turn on universal qualification. Not necessary.

  2. Out of Scope5% picked this

    Drug-related crime is not as serious a problem for the city as the police chief

    The author is challenging the chief's explanation, not the seriousness of the drug problem. Negation test: even if the drug problem is exactly as serious as the chief claims, the author's argument — that the diverted-resources story is false because tickets are unchanged — still goes through. Not necessary.

  3. Out of Scope1% picked this

    Writing speeding tickets should be as important a priority for the city as

    This is a normative claim about budget priorities. The author's argument is descriptive — about whether resources were diverted, not whether they should have been. Negation test: even if speeding tickets should be a lower priority than drugs, the chief's factual claim could still be evaluated as true or false. Not necessary.

  4. Reversal / Negation12% picked this

    The police could be cracking down on illegally parked cars and combating the drug problem without having to

    This is the contrary of what the argument needs. The author concludes that resources were NOT diverted (tickets are unchanged). For this argument to work, the author needs that maintaining tickets requires not diverting. This answer says you could do both at once — which is exactly what would destroy the argument. Not necessary, and in fact the opposite of what is needed.

  5. Correct81% picked this

    The police cannot continue writing as many speeding tickets as ever while diverting resources to

    Why this is right

    This is the gap. The author moves from "tickets are still being written as much as ever" to "resources were not diverted." That move only works if maintaining the same ticket output is incompatible with diverting resources. Negation test: suppose the police could keep writing tickets and divert resources at the same time. Then the chief's story is consistent with the unchanged ticket count, and the author has no basis for calling the excuse false. The argument collapses, so the assumption is necessary.

    Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

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