The board in charge of certifying law enforcement officers in Colorado will decide Monday whether to start requiring all agencies in the state to conduct psychological and physical evaluations before hiring applicants.

State law requires such evaluations to be conducted before a hiring can occur. But that standard is not actually adhered to by current practice.

Currently, the Peace Officer Standards and Training board has required an individual to receive a psychological evaluation only before their first police job in the state, but none after that.

Officials now say the evaluations should be required each time an officer changes agencies in the state. The law does not limit evaluations only to the first hire.

“You’ve just absolutely got to do everything you can to adequately assess their integrity and mental stability,” said Grand Junction Police Chief John Camper, vice chairman of the POST board. “There’s no doubt about it.”

Camper said because of the power law enforcement officers have, including the ability to make arrests and even take a life, it’s crucial to ensure no weak candidates are getting hired.

A cost-benefit analysis conducted by POST on the rule change states that the statutory language enacted by the legislature doesn’t support requiring an evaluation only before the first hire in Colorado.

The analysis said that the hiring agency usually bears costs of the psychological examinations, which can range as high as $375 per candidate. The physical evaluations usually are frequently covered by an applicant’s health insurance, the analysis said.

The Denver Post has focused on officer certification and hiring in a series of investigative articles.

The newspaper’s reporting has found that Colorado’s police discipline system is more lenient than at least 39 other states. In Colorado, the certificate required to do law enforcement can be revoked only following a conviction on a felony or certain misdemeanors. Most states allow for such revocations to occur for far less, such as misconduct on the job, personnel transgressions or ongoing drug abuse.

As a result of Colorado’s lenient standards, many officers with past findings of misconduct and personnel transgressions cycle from department to department, often landing at rural agencies that say they have trouble finding quality candidates.

Colorado also has less- stringent hiring standards for police than other states, such as Arizona. Arizona requires that comprehensive background checks, including a review of all personnel issues, be conducted on all law enforcement applicants by an agency before a hire. Colorado, for the most part, leaves the breadth of such background investigations up to the local agency doing the hiring. In addition, Arizona conducts audits of agencies to ensure they are adhering to the background check standards required by law.

The packet of rule changes the POST board will consider Monday also include an amendment to regulations on how deferred judgments and sentences are supposed to be handled, an issue The Denver Post reviewed in an article published on Sunday. POST regulations currently state that felony deferred judgments bar individuals from holding the certificate required to work in law enforcement in Colorado.

But the Colorado Attorney General’s Office has said that regulation is not enforced because it doesn’t comply with state law, which specifies that felony convictions are a disqualifying offense.

On the psychological evaluations issue, Camper said his department already conducts them for all officer hires.

“If I’m hiring someone even if they’ve been an officer at another jurisdiction, I’m going to require them to go through it,” Camper said. “The psych tests I’ve seen, they are checking on what type of problems someone has experienced in the workplace. They are asking for what conflicts a person is having with friends, neighbors and co-workers.”

Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747, cosher@denverpost.com or @chrisosher