Report: Police Hiring Test With 90% Pass Rate, Favored by Deputy Mayor Burgess and Council President Nelson, Isn't Appropriate for Seattle
Nelson has suggested that the independent commission in charge of police testing is partly responsible for stagnant police hiring.
By Erica C. Barnett
A "due diligence" review of a potential alternative test for police recruits concluded that a test used by small cities and towns in Washington state is not appropriate for Seattle and would not speed up police hiring. In addition, the report says the alternative test, favored by Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess and City Council President Sara Nelson, "is not an option" because the company "does not want to provide police testing services for the City of Seattle right now."
An independent city commission, the Public Safety Civil Service Commission, produced the report after Burgess asked the commission to consider replacing the current test, which has a 73 percent pass rate, to one that 90 percent of applicants pass.
The PSCSC's report compares the test SPD currently uses, developed by the National Testing Network in response to the 2012 federal consent decree, with another test created by NTN competitor Public Safety Testing. NTN created hiring tests for police departments in six of the big "West Coast Seven" cities, while PST's test is used by suburban cities, rural jurisdictions, and Spokane.
According to NTN's responses to questions from the PSCSC, which PubliCola obtained through a records request, more than 400 cities use their test, including 13 in Washington state.
PST declined to participate in the commission's review and did not provide information about which jurisdictions use its tests.
The PSCSC has defended the NTN test, noting that the city worked with SPD and the testing company to develop the test in response to the consent decree and a 2017 police accountability ordinance that, though it was never fully implemented, is widely regarded as a baseline for police accountability in Seattle.
Among other factors, the exam tests for "restraint in use of authority, integrity, ability to understand and help with human distress, group bias awareness, and commitment to equality.”
Nelson has suggested repeatedly that the test, and the PSCSC in general, are at least partly responsible for SPD's inability to quickly recruit and hire police officers, a claim the PSCSC has disputed. The new report notes that new recruits spend, on average, about 28 days in processes where the PSCSC has any involvement, compared to 5.5 months in SPD's pre-employment screening process, and 1.5 months before they start training at the state police academy.
According to the report, PST confirmed that they would need to develop an entirely new "custom" test for Seattle and then test it for validity, a measure of how well a test predicts recruits' future job performance, a process that "could take months."
"The primary benefit of engaging PST would be to give candidates applying to other regional agencies that use the PST test the ability to also send their score to Seattle," the report notes. "However, that feature would not likely be available if Seattle required a new customized (different) exam."
The report also cautions against using both tests to evaluate SPD applicants, noting that the two tests measure different things, and that one—PST's—is easier to pass. Police "candidates may become savvy about which exam is easier and choose the easier exam to boost their scores," the report says. "From a legal standpoint, [NTN] noted that this practice creates risk if the City were to face litigation related to adverse/disparate impact"—that is, if someone sued because a test excluded more people in a protected class, such as women or racial minorities.
"Typically, exams with high pass rates are masking adverse impact that would be present at higher cut scores or when used to rank order" candidates, the report says.
The report also recommends that the PSCSC conduct an open bidding process, known as a request for proposals, for the police hiring test next year. PSCSC director Andrea Scheele will present the report to the council's governance committee, chaired by Nelson, this Thursday.