A Different Take on Detective Testing

Officer #2 always gets their reports in on time, and those reports rarely require any corrections. The officer does thorough, complete investigations without any input needed from their sergeant. When not assigned to a call, the officer keeps busy with community policing activities, traffic enforcement, and business checks.  When assigned to call for service, they handle it efficiently and professionally, and the citizens involved frequently call the station to comment on how helpful the officer was.

Because the rules and/or the union contract require it, you give both officers a written test and an oral exam. Officer #1 scores a 95 on both, and Officer #2 scores a 70 on both. Which one do you promote to be your next detective?

In the first scenario, as the general manager you immediately sign Player #2, and then you immediately fire the scout who wasted your club’s time and money by suggesting that you even consider Player #1.

In the second scenario, you probably shrug and promote Officer #1, because they scored higher and that’s what the rules and/or the union contract require you to do. Is there any reason at all to believe that officer is not going to be just as lazy and ineffective a detective as they were a patrol officer?

When police agencies conduct written exams, oral boards, or assessment centers, the only thing they are really testing is the candidates’ ability to take tests. For the most part, they are testing a candidate’s ability to memorize information and recall it when asked. Is that important? Not really, though I suppose it’s theoretically possible that a detective’s ability to recall a lesser-known statute or department policy might prove to be helpful in a tense situation. There’s also the possibility that a detective who is an excellent shot could make the difference in a life-or-death situation. Would it make sense to line up all the applicants at the pistol range and promote whoever gets the highest score? What if there is a situation some day when a detective who can run really fast manages to chase down and apprehend a suspect before that suspect can escape and hurt someone? Would a police agency have the greatest chance of finding the best person to promote to detective if they held a 100-yard dash and promoted whoever won?

Past behavior is not only the most reliable predictor of future behavior; it is really the only predictor of future behavior. What any applicant says they will do at some hypothetical call in the future is essentially irrelevant when compared to what they have actually been doing for the past several years. A police agency is exponentially more likely to wind up with a hardworking, conscientious, technically proficient detective if they promote an officer with a history of consistently being hardworking, conscientious, and technically proficient. It really makes little sense to promote someone based on their ability to answer questions confidently while regurgitating the contents of the study guide when you already have several years’ worth of actual performance to look at instead. Each applicant has been, in effect, submitting an ongoing application for detective for the past several years; why would you ignore that in favor of a hypothetical narrative that he or she claims is what they will do in the future?

Is this an issue because hardworking, conscientious, technically proficient officers will never do well on promotional tests? Of course not. It’s an issue because an officer’s ability to memorize information and do well during an oral interview has no bearing whatsoever on their ability to be a good detective. I’m sure everyone reading this can think of one or more detectives in their agency who are excellent at their job, and who were also excellent patrol officers. I’m sure everyone can also think of one or more detectives who bring nothing at all to the table, and who were just as lazy and ineffective as patrol officers, but who managed to do very well on the promotional exam.

What you don’t see very often, if ever, is a hardworking, conscientious, technically proficient patrol officer who becomes a detective and suddenly becomes lazy, disinterested, and ineffective. You also don’t see many (if any) examples of patrol officers who are unmotivated, apathetic and ineffective, but who suddenly become hardworking, conscientious and technically proficient after they get promoted to detective. Perhaps it has happened somewhere, but I don’t know of any examples.

Why is that important? Obviously, an officer’s past behavior is a far more accurate predictor of their future behavior than their performance on a test. Logically, that makes perfect sense. Statistically, it is the difference in accuracy between taking the “scores” (performance) of hundreds and hundreds of workdays and comparing them to the score of an extremely small sample size; that of just a single day of promotional testing.

I’ve often heard that assessment centers are a much better alternative to written testing and oral boards and that they provide greater insight for administrators into which candidates will do well if promoted. A Google search for “police assessment center study guide” yields literally millions of results; are we really supposed to believe that assessment centers can’t be studied for in much the same way as written exams and oral boards? Or are we supposed to believe that the ability to appear calm and relaxed during a promotional exam somehow predicts or correlates to being a hardworking, conscientious, technically proficient detective?

To return to the baseball analogy for a moment, let’s say you had the same two players described above, and instead of a written and oral exam you staged an exhibition game to determine who was going to get the job. You could make the same arguments in favor of an exhibition game as you could for a police assessment center (“we’ll see how the candidate performs under simulated pressure in a realistic scenario”), but in the end would it make any sense at all to go with the player who does better in a single game as opposed to the player who has demonstrated over the course of hundreds of games that he’s clearly the better shortstop? No matter how well (or poorly) a police applicant does at an assessment center, the assessment center (or written test, or oral board) is still nothing more than a statistically irrelevant sample size of his or her performance.

One argument I’ve heard is that a candidate who does well on a written test, oral board, or assessment center has demonstrated that they are serious about becoming a detective and have put in the time and effort to prepare. The accompanying inference, of course, is that anyone who does not do well must not have put in the time and effort to prepare and therefore must not be serious about the detective position. That’s nonsense.

The ability to test well is a skill in and of itself. The ability to memorize study materials, the ability to appear calm and self-assured when being questioned by an oral board, and the ability to smoothly and calmly proceed through various scenarios during an assessment center are all skills that, quite literally, have nothing at all to do with being a good detective. A person who has one or more of those skills may or may not turn out to be a hardworking, conscientious, technically skilled detective. The point is that the ability to test well, in whatever format you choose to conduct such testing, is completely unrelated to how well or poorly a person will do as a detective.

As a detective sergeant, I’ve sat on a number of oral boards other agencies were conducting for an open detective position. The questions asked on these boards, whether supplied by the agency, the testing company, or the panelists, generally fall into some version of the following:

1. You respond to (insert type of call here) as a detective. What do you do?
2. Questions about statutes.
3. Questions about collecting and preserving evidence.
4. Questions about search warrants.
5. Questions about interviews/Miranda.

What I don’t hear very often are questions designed to let the board know how well or poorly the officer is doing in their current assignment. The testing process would be far more likely to turn out a good detective if the goal was to determine who is and has been doing the best job in their current assignment for the past several years.

Compare the following two questions:

1. As a detective, you are dispatched to a residential burglary. The family is waiting in the driveway with two patrol officers, who tell you that the rear door was kicked in sometime that day.  What do you do?
2. Can you tell us about the last burglary you were dispatched to, commercial or residential, including what actions you took when you arrived and what you did to resolve the case?

The first question is basically asking, “According to your recollection of what we suggested you should study, what are the answers we are looking for here, which may or may not be what you would actually do in this situation?”

The second question provides a much better opportunity to assess the officer’s actual job performance in such a situation, rather than assessing the fictional narrative of what they say they will do at some point in the future if they are promoted to detective.

When you’re asking that second question, remember not to expect the officer to respond the same way an experienced detective would. They aren’t a detective yet. The proper steps for a detective to take are, in many cases, different from the proper steps for a patrol officer to take.  What you are looking for are the proper steps for a hardworking, conscientious, technically proficient patrol officer to take at such a call. If the officer’s past behavior indicates that they work hard, try to do their best, and have taken the time to become proficient at patrol officer’s tasks, it’s virtually certain that they will bring those qualities with them if they are promoted to detective.

On the other hand, what if the officer’s response to the second question is something like this: “Well, let’s see.  About a week ago I was dispatched to 123 Elm Street for a residential burglary. The people who live there were out in the driveway when I arrived, so I stood with them for about thirty minutes, telling them that a detective would be along in a while.  You know, it’s really a detective call, so I didn’t have to do anything.” Is there any reasonable expectation that, if promoted to detective, the officer is going to show any more initiative or do anything more useful? Your department policy may dictate that detectives handle burglary investigations, but does that mean there was literally nothing the patrol officer could have done to help, other than stand in the driveway for thirty minutes? What detective-oriented training are you to send them to in order to make them want to help victims of crime and get the investigation started and do their best to help out? That officer is telling you, loudly and clearly, that they aren’t interested in working hard or being conscientious in their current assignment, so why would you believe that will change if they get a promotion?

Another argument I’ve heard is that being a detective is different than being a patrol officer, so it requires different skills. Even if you believe that, is the ability to memorize study materials one of those “different” skills? Is the ability to test well one of those skills?

I agree that, for example, a detective is going to be writing more search warrant and arrest warrant applications than a patrol officer. But is that really a different skill set? A search warrant application is certain different from, say, a shoplifting arrest report, but it doesn’t really require a different set of skills. It’s more accurate to say that it requires you to take your existing report-writing skills and apply them to a different type of report. If you have a patrol officer who works hard and writes excellent traffic crash reports, information reports, and arrest reports, it’s a sure bet that he or she will write excellent warrant applications as a detective. By the same token, if you have a patrol officer who can’t be bothered to put any reasonable time or effort into their reports, it’s a good bet they won’t expend any more effort as a detective.

When we conduct interviews for police applicants (I have sat on those boards as well), we aren’t looking for people who know all the right answers to questions about statutes and police procedures. Why not? Because unless we are interviewing candidates who are or have been police officers, they aren’t going to know any of those answers. What we are looking for is the “best” person to hire, so our questions are generally trying to determine who is ethical, honest, intelligent, and hardworking. We want to know what they’ve been doing with their life for the past few years, not what they say they will do in the future (which might or might not be what they would actually do.)

If we handled police applicant interviews the same way we handle promotional interviews, we’d tell the applicants to memorize the criminal statutes and the department rules and regulations. Then we’d quiz them on those things. Maybe we’d add in a few scenarios to see how they react. Then we’d assess who looked the calmest and who regurgitated the study material in the smoothest manner. And then we’d hire the best test-taker out of the bunch. Is that likely to produce the best cops? I certainly don’t think so, and I doubt anyone else does. Is it more likely, even by a small margin, to produce better cops than looking at an applicant’s past behavior in order to identify who is consistently hardworking, ethical, intelligent, and honest? Absolutely not.

Of course, some of the examples in this article are at the extreme ends of the spectrum. It’s unlikely that your choices for a promotion are going to be between an officer who is exemplary in all aspects of their career, and an officer who should probably be disciplined rather than promoted. But you are nearly certain to have applicants who vary greatly in work ethic, dedication, and proficiency. Would you prefer to structure your detective testing in order to identify the applicant who is and has been consistently putting in the time and effort to excel at their current job?  Or would you prefer to structure your detective testing to identify the candidate who is better than the rest at memorizing the study guide and being charismatic during interviews?

If you are a police administrator and right now you’re thinking, “I don’t need to identify who is consistently working hard to excel at their current assignment. I have nothing but hardworking, conscientious, technically proficient patrol officers applying for promotion. They are all exemplary,” then consider yourself fortunate. If your department is like that, then you could hold a chili cookoff or a chess tournament and promote the winner, and still wind up with an outstanding detective. If you and your department are not in that position, then you probably want to structure your testing process to identify who is consistently doing the best job now, in their current assignment, because that is far more likely to result promoting in a good detective than assessing an applicant’s ability to memorize study material, or their ability to appear calm and relaxed when being interviewed (which is often directly related to their ability to memorize study material.) And both of those skills, by the way, have as much to do with being a good detective as winning a chili cookoff or a chess tournament.

Basically, it all boils down to: Do you want to identify the best test-taker and promote that person to detective? Or do you want to find the best police officer and promote that person to detective?

For the baseball fans, it’s spring training 1997 and you need a shortstop.  Your choices are:

1. Mike Bordick - .240 average, 18 doubles, 5 home runs, 54 RBI, 46 runs scored, .979 fielding percentage in 1996
2. Alex Rodriguez - .358 average, 54 double, 36 home runs, 123 RBI, 141 runs scored, .977 fielding percentage in 1996

You give both of them a written test and an oral board; Bordick gets a 95 on each, and Rodriguez gets a 70 on each. You decide to throw in an assessment center by holding an exhibition game to see how each player reacts in the simulated stress of a real game. Bordick goes four-for-five with four doubles, and Rodriguez gets one single in five at-bats. Is there anyone who would conclude that Bordick is likely to do a better job at shortstop because he did better on the tests? Or because he did better at the “assessment center”?

About the Author

Michael O’Brien spent three years in the 101st Military Police Company at Fort Campbell and five years in the 344th Military Police Company (USAR) in New Haven as a sergeant and squad leader before joining the Brookfield (CT) Police Department in 1997. He was promoted to sergeant in 2004 and to detective sergeant in 2009. He is an avid hiker and backpacker, a traffic crash reconstructionist, firearms instructor, and member of Mensa, and is also the father of high-school-age triplets. He can be reached via email at [email protected].