DAYTON, OHIO — The city of Dayton plans to discard the test scores of the 748 people who passed its police recruit exam in November and will instead hire officers based only on a subjective oral interview — a change meant to improve the city’s ability to hire more minorities.
The announcement comes after the U.S. Department of Justice forced the city to lower its passing score to allow for more minorities into the hiring pool as part of a federal discrimination lawsuit the city settled in 2009.
Those scores are no longer relevant and all candidates are now on equal footing. The oral exam will consist of five situation-based questions asked by an expert panel and last 30 minutes per candidate.
Only those who passed the written exams are allowed to take the oral exam.
The move is arguably the most significant change in the city’s hiring process of police and firefighters in decades. It was made based on a recommendation by Fire & Police Selection Inc., based in Folsom, Calif. FPSI was hired by the city for $150,000 to revamp Dayton’s police and fire exams, said Jim Moore, the city’s interim civil service director.
Moore said in previous years, the oral interview was conducted by the police department and would be factored in with the written exam results.
FPSI was contracted because it had experience with federal discrimination lawsuits, Civil Service officials said.
Dayton Police Union President Randy Beane called the change “outrageous.” He said it circumvents the city’s rule of one hiring practice where candidates must be hired one at a time based on a testing score from best to worst.
“There’s not going to be any objectiveness in the process,” he said. “We are checking with our attorney to see if this is legal.”
City Commissioner Dean Lovelace welcomed the change and said an oral exam can sometimes better reflect a candidate’s worthiness. “If this change increases our ability to hire more minorities, I am for it,” he said. “I have maintained the written test shouldn’t be the only weight in the process.”
The city began notifying the 748 who passed the exam by mail this week. Those moving on will have to pass a preliminary background check before participating in the oral interview.
The panel will then score the applicant’s answers and the process will be completed in early June.
Those who pass the oral exam must then pass a polygraph test and psychological and physical exams before being ranked on a hiring list.
Moore disagreed the hiring change was meant to circumvent the city’s hiring rules mandated in its charter. But when asked if this creates more wiggle room to subjectively hire candidates, Moore said, “that might very well be the case. We are reacting to the consent decree which states that we are not to engage in a selection process that has a disparate impact on a certain race,” he said.
The Department of Justice sued Dayton in 2008, claiming its hiring practices for police and fire positions discriminated against minorities, mainly blacks. Dayton has since spent more than $500,000 settling terms of the lawsuit, which included new civil service exams and paying some black applicants who failed the 2006 test that was found to be invalid.
The city last month agreed to lower the passing scores on the two-part written exams to allow 258 additional people into the passing pool after the DOJ rejected the city’s first passing score proposal. Applicants had to correctly answer 58 percent of questions on an 86-question exam and get 63 percent right of 102 questions on the other.
Of the 748 who passed, at least 111 are black, 564 are white and 19 are Hispanic. Some did not declare their race.
The DOJ’s rejection has indefinitely postponed the firefighters exam that was originally scheduled earlier this month and civil service officials said they might not use FPSI to develop the firefighters exam. It is unclear if FPSI’s services will be dropped because of the DOJ’s initial rejection of the test results.
More
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
12 comments:
Just another example of the "Dumming Down of America" to include stupid people. If your to dumb to get the job than too bad. Even if a certain group is always included in that class. Look at what is happening in Washington becouse we allow stupid people the right to vote!!!
They want tohire more minorities!
Sounds like affirmative action to me - here's a reminder: Affirmative action hurts 50% of the people impacted....consider the qualified candidate not chosen due to affirmative action!
So now thy hire based on color instead of content of character? It's a recipe for a corrupt police force.
The united States Supreme Court has ruled that affirmative action is discriminitory and cannot be used. The problem I see with this procedure is the "problem solving formula and report writing skills will be overlooked with ORAL only". What this means in the future when these officers hit the street is most likely the cases will be tossed out b/c of poor report writing skills. I hope the 101 other cultures that make up the USA file a class action complaint against this b/c they are being dicriminated against.
Sounds to me like they are saying minorities are "intellectually challenged, in other words less educated, or have inferior genetics which makes them not be able to pass a test.
Wow-if I were a minority I'd be shocked and saddened to be thought of that way.
How is it equal rights if they are making it so minorities can get in based on the fact that they may be dumber than their white counterparts.
11:00 is absolutely right. A functionally illiterate police force will be a get out of jail free card for criminals who will have their cases thrown out of court due to inaccurate, poorly written police reports.
That's assuming that lawyers and judges will still be required to be able to read, write and understand the constitution! Or, maybe, we'll just require that Judges just be able to orally recite the alphabet and drop all pretense of choosing only qualified persons in any chosen field. We're getting to the point that Jethro from the Beverly Hillbillies would now really be qualified to be a brain surgeon because he graduated 6th grade.
Well until budgets get straight none of it matters. Extremely smart, qualified people of any color are not gonna apply to be a $34k a year beat cop.
According to Criminal Justice stats 6-7 out of every ten black males have had issues with the law in a negative way. Back ground checks will knock some of those out. Addtionally, if you look at prison stats it appears more than 65 percent of inmates are black that are incarcerated.
Remember, this 'dumbing down' was done at the insistence of Obama's Justice Dept., NOT the Dayton Police or Dayton government.
and you wonder why the US is going in the dumps....
Bill Cosby says earn the job, dont have it given to you...
We just keep dumbing down the standards for everything. Thought you were gonna be a football star, so you didn't bother learning to read or write? No problem. Someone is just "picking on you" now. The people that actually paid attention in school (or read the pre-test manual so they could pass the test?), well, your efforts are borderline stupid now, aren't they? YOU get to go to back of the line, or kicked kicked out of the line altogether, so that the dumbest and most incompetent of us all get a chance. To carry a gun and make life and death decisions for the rest of us. And write (such as they can) reports that a defense attorney will shred in court. Its a great country. If you are lazy, stupid, and unprepared for anything in life except handouts and special treatment.
Post a Comment