By Megan Guza
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jun. 27—Twenty-one of 26 Pittsburgh police hopefuls who were permitted to retake the bureau’s psychological assessment are part of the academy class that began earlier this week, but Chief Larry Scirotto stressed this week that the root of the issue lay with the test-givers, not the test-takers.
The bureau’s psychological assessments are meant to evaluate police academy candidates’ emotional and psychological stability. Last month, more than half of the candidates who took the assessments were rejected.
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The evaluations, which are based on standards set forth by the state’s Municipal Police Officers’ Training and Education Commission (MPOETC), are performed by psychologists who then recommend whether a candidate should move forward in the process.
“We’re trying to determine if a candidate has a cognitive disability that would prevent them from doing this profession ... and do they have the cognitive ability to do this job,” Chief Scirotto said.
“In this instance,” the chief continued, “we found [the psychologists] were applying some personal standards to the evaluation overall and making decisions on candidates we would have otherwise said gave acceptable responses.”
In short, he said, their assessments went beyond the scope of what they were there to assess.
The city contracts with multiple psychologists to perform the assessments, and candidates must undergo the assessment before they begin the training academy. In the last round of testing in May, 26 of 44 candidates were disqualified by the assessments. Not long after, Mayor Ed Gainey said that those candidates would be allowed to try again.
The chief denied that allowing candidates to retake the test was a compromise of standards.
“It’s important [to] understand the bureau is not lessening standards for any collection of issues,” he said. “We’re confident in the recruits that we’re hiring, and there shouldn’t be any stigma to the candidates or the recruits.”
The announcement drew concerns from police watchdogs and some experts who worried the do-over could be the result of pressure to “pass” police applicants amid a continued shortage of city officers.
Among those who questioned the initial announcement last month was Elizabeth Pittinger , of the Citizens Police Review Board . She said the standards were already lowered when in 2022 the city eliminated the 60 college credit requirement for city officers.
“When you lower the standards, you have lowered the standards,” she said, noting that potential police officers would do well to gain the “personal development, self-discipline [and] analytical skills” that she said can come through a college career.
“You’re moving to a whole other level of characteristics among the group,” she said.
The city generally budgets for 900 officers, but it has been several years since the city has had a full complement. Earlier this year, the number of officers had dropped below 750. No recruit classes went through the training academy for more than two years, and the most recent academy graduates put only a small dent in the shortfall.
“I would guess they’re so desperate for applicants that everyone’s under pressure to pass these people,” Mark Zelig , a public safety psychology expert and former Utah lieutenant, mused last month when apprised of the situation in Pittsburgh . “The only other explanation is that [the psychologists] don’t have enough experience to know how to interpret law enforcement norms.”
Chief Scirotto said the number of candidates disqualified by the assessments grew over each of the past three testing cycles.
In July, 38 police candidates were evaluated and five failed or were not recommended for employment. In November, 34 were evaluated and half were disqualified. And then last month, nearly 60% of the 44 candidates were turned away after the psychological assessment.
That was an aberration compared to the state standard of roughly 15%-20%.
“We were an outlier in that, and we started looking at the process much more thoroughly,” the chief said. “Not much has changed about the candidates, so what was causing these problems?”
Ms. Pittinger asked: “How do they know that it’s not the candidates?”
“Is it an inconsistency in all of those psychologists, or is it the reality of the group of people who went through the screening?” she said. “Why are they determining the psychologists are the ones who caused this to happen? Psychologists are always going to have some subjective interpretation of information.”
While MPOETC sets the standards for police training and certification in Pennsylvania , it does not dictate specific psychological assessment questions; rather, it sets guidelines as to what areas must be addressed during the process, according to a spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Police , which oversees MPOETC.
Those guidelines are relatively broad: A psychologist licensed in Pennsylvania has to interview the candidate regarding personal, educational, employment and criminal history, and candidates must complete the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory — one of the most common psychological tests.
Chief Scirotto said the department has added additional layers to its psychological assessment, including what’s commonly known as the COPS-R test, a psych evaluation test geared specifically toward law enforcement and hits on biases and interpersonal relations.
They will also employ forensic psychologists rather than clinical psychologists, he said. The former focus more heavily on cognitive disorders, whereas clinical psychologists generally deal in behavioral psychology. Those psychologists will also receive less background information on the candidates they’re screening, the chief said. Until now, the evaluators received a background packet that included things like behavioral history.
“It can be hard to separate their personal position from some of the things you may learn about the candidate and, more importantly, shouldn’t be applicable to the decision-making process they’re performing,” Chief Scirotto said. “If they don’t have that data, then they’re left with making that determination from the interview.”
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