Five New York Police Department recruits had been eager to graduate in August after spending six months in the academy. They had spent hours studying the law and political science and had undergone physical training. But three months later, they still report to the academy, where they have been relegated to administrative tasks or chores like mopping floors.
They, along with 25 full-fledged officers, had failed department psychological exams or background checks. A commanding officer who cleared them to join the department never should have done so, the department said. The 25 officers were stripped of their shields and guns in July.
The police officers’ union, the Police Benevolent Association, is fighting the city’s efforts to fire the officers and recruits, arguing in court filings that their records have been clean.
It’s a legal battle born out of an exam that some say unfairly sidelines candidates who struggled as adolescents or were treated for depression and other common mental health problems. Others say that candidates of color are more likely to be penalized on the test than their white peers.
“Psychological evaluations have been a constant problem,” said Lt. Patrick Gordon, the president of the Guardians Association, an organization representing Black officers.
But city lawyers said those targeted for dismissal have serious problems in their backgrounds: One had a driving history that included striking a pedestrian, eight license suspensions and $6,000 in unpaid parking tickets. Another admitted to paying a stripper and a masseuse for sex. Another acknowledged a “history of arrests and violations of law,” the city said in a filing.
But in interviews, a dozen officers and candidates, as well as psychologists and a lawyer who handle appeals, said that rejections are often based on assessments of behavior that could be characterized as normal, youthful transgressions — shoplifting and cutting class in high school, or getting caught with marijuana or a fake identification card.
In New York, all candidates for the police academy must pass a background check, a physical fitness test, a medical exam, and a two-part psychological test that includes written true-or-false questions that take about five hours to complete and an interview with one of the department’ psychologists.
The Police Department declined to provide figures showing how often minorities, or recruits in general, fail the mental health exam but said that in a poll of recruits who graduated in August, 88.5 percent of them said they were “very satisfied” with the professionalism of the department’s psychologists.
