Logical Reasoning

PT2 · S2 · Q3 More than a year ago

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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.

Conclusion

The police chief's excuse — that resources had to be diverted from speeding tickets to drug-related crime — is not true.

Evidence

The chief said resources were diverted from speeding tickets to fight drugs. But speeding tickets are still being written at the same rate as ever.

Evaluate

For the author's reasoning to work, "as many speeding tickets as ever" has to be incompatible with "resources actually being diverted." If the police could keep writing the same number of tickets and divert resources to drugs at the same time, the chief's explanation could still be true.

Goal

The correct answer should establish that maintaining the same speeding-ticket output is incompatible with diverting resources to drugs.

The conclusion in the passage depends on the assumption that

Every member of the police
Out of Scope
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.
1% picked this
Drug-related crime is not as
Out of Scope
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.
5% picked this
Writing speeding tickets should be
Out of Scope
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.
1% picked this
The police could be cracking
Reversal / Negation
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.
12% picked this
Correct
The police cannot continue writing
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.
81% picked this

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