Abbott Koloff

Staff Writer, @AbbottKoloff

Military veterans, including a relatively small group of men and women who may have been psychologically scarred in combat, made up almost 20 percent of those tested at a Bergen County screening center that determines whether a person is mentally fit to become a police officer.

Of the veterans tested by the Institute for Forensic Psychology in Oakland, a little more than 5 percent had been diagnosed by the military with a mental health disability. Almost 40 percent of that group was approved to be police officers.

And Matthew Guller, a managing partner with the center, said that some veterans do not reveal symptoms of trauma until long after they return home.

North Jersey police chiefs said they like hiring military veterans because they often are more mature than young men and women fresh out of high school, and may be better at keeping their cool in stressful situations.

Still, with a growing number of veterans applying to be police officers after returning home from war – in New Jersey, disabled veterans go to the head of the line on Civil Service hiring lists – the screening of police candidates for mental health issues has become even more critical in the hiring process.

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Guller said military service can be “a testing ground” for police candidates but added that “some guys could be a serious liability to a department” because of mental health issues in their backgrounds.

Hiring someone with a “record for being impaired,” he said, could be “a risky decision. If a guy is symptomatic, there’s no question we reject them. If he’s asymptomatic, we confer with the department.”

The Institute supplied a database to The Record and NorthJersey.com that provided a look at police recruits, without identifying them, applying to agencies across the state from 2014 through 2016, and a glimpse at how they are vetted. It tested 3,785 police candidates over those three years, including 751 veterans, applying to 251 agencies, most of them in New Jersey. In Bergen and Passaic counties, 24 percent of 522 candidates applying to 65 agencies were military veterans.

While Guller suggested caution in cases involving mental health disabilities, he said those psychological conditions are under control in the recruits who pass his screening. And New Jersey police chiefs said that officers, whether they have a military background or not, who suffer trauma on the job may recover, even when they have been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, commonly known as PTSD.

“We’ve had police officers in traumatic events,” said Ray Hayducka, South Brunswick’s police chief and the former president of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police. “We get them counseling. You don’t dispose of them because they’re sick.”

He added that departments “take a risk” if they hire someone who has “psychological problems” but that each candidate should be evaluated individually. Military veterans, he said, bring discipline to the job and “are good under pressure situations.”

That perception was echoed by several North Jersey police chiefs.

Jerry Speziale, Paterson’s police director, said his department gets its “fair share of veterans,” but that he did not know how many of his officers have military backgrounds.

He said he wasn’t aware of the city ever hiring a veteran who had been collecting payments for a mental health disability and that veterans generally “can be better in a stressful situation,” adding that it was difficult to predict how any police officer would respond when facing a “unique” situation.

Mahwah Police Chief James Batelli said a little more than 20 percent of the officers in his department, which is not a civil service agency, are veterans. Having a military background is one of many factors he said he considers when hiring, adding that he’s more concerned with “what they have accomplished.” Veterans, he said, generally are more mature than other candidates, but he added that “in some instances, it is not always true.”

Guller’s Institute rejected 8.5 percent of the veterans it tested, almost twice the rejection rate for non-military veterans. It approved 15 of the 38 veterans who were diagnosed with mental health disabilities. But that doesn’t tell the whole story, as undiagnosed veterans may go years before seeking help, Guller said.

“Sometimes five years later they’re recognizing in themselves the problems they had from their combat situation,” Guller said. He said that their military training “is a plus,” but added, “If there is a traumatic event, traumas are cumulative.”

The Institute passed another 35 of 52 veterans who had been flagged for a major disciplinary problem in the military. Guller did not talk about specific cases, but said candidates who committed crimes, like credit card fraud, would be rejected. Those who were approved might include men and women who left a military base without permission to see a sick parent or who were caught with a bottle of liquor in Iraq, where it is prohibited by the military.

Those approved with mental health disabilities typically had relatively minor issues that had been under control for years, he said, adding that his center puts candidates through extensive psychological tests, interviews with family and friends, and reviews of prior medical records.

But the Institute’s database showed three candidates approved who were collecting military benefits for a 30-percent disability, a designation that the Department of Veterans Affairs said on its website may include “intermittent periods of inability to perform occupational tasks” and panic attacks. One person was approved with a 50 percent disability, which may include more frequent panic attacks along with “impaired judgement.”

Guller said that even if such conditions are under control, an officer collecting mental health benefits may create a legal liability for agencies that hire them. The designation, he said, could be used against an agency in a lawsuit related to an officer’s conduct. Guller said he recommends that candidates stop collecting mental health disability payments before they start their new jobs.

A spokesman for the Department of Veterans Affairs, Terrence Hayes, said in an email that “an individual's type of employment is not a bar to disability compensation.” He added that the VA would consider lowering the amount of payments if a veteran's medical condition has improved, and the change is not temporary. He said that no adjustment would be made until after the veteran had an opportunity to challenge it.

Batelli said that he doesn’t believe collecting disability payments is an issue, as long as the veterans are entitled to receive them.

“The issue for liability would be one of negligent hiring by the agency, not whether an individual is collecting benefits,” Batelli said, adding that police departments conduct “thorough background” checks to make sure candidates do not have problems, like anger issues, that could be used against the agency in civil lawsuits related to use of force complaints.

He said that he would be concerned about anyone who had a disciplinary problem in the military. He didn’t say whether he would close the door on hiring someone who had a past record of having PTSD, but said that they would be thoroughly vetted. “PTSD isn’t limited to the military,” he said, adding that he’s never hired a veteran who had PTSD and that none of the veterans who work in his department have ever suffered from the problem.

Police departments sent 21 officers suffering from PTSD to the Institute for Forensic Psychology to undergo fitness for duty tests during a four-year period through 2014, according to a study conducted by Guller. He said he did not know how many were veterans.

The number was a relatively small fraction of the almost 500 officers sent for fitness testing over that period, but 12 of the officers suffering from PTSD made up more than one-third of the total number of those who were declared unfit for duty “with little chance of recovery.”