This is part of the series on the Baltimore Citizen’s Academy, being posted every Monday and Thursday. Today’s entry is based on a presentation from Major James Handley.

Its also not too late to take part in the current iteration of the Citizen’s Academy!

The Baltimore Police department has been shrinking lately, and not because of increased efficiency or planned drawdowns. In the last five years, the department has shrunk by 500 officers and hiring has only recently starting matching attrition. The BPD’s actions have made national news, including the death of Freddie Gray, the Justice Department’s consent decree, the Gun Trace Task Force, and the surging homicide rate. The negative parts of the BPD are on display, and the citizens have lost faith in the department.

Picture of a slide showing attrition versus hiring from 2002 until 2016. Attrition is in blue, and hiring is in red.

The issues in BPD’s hiring actually predate many of the recent problems. The department has lost 800 officers since 2002, as 14 out of the last 18 years have seen higher attrition than hiring, and only a single year where hiring outpaced attrition by more than 4 officers (2009).

The Consent Decree has an entire section devoted to fixing recruitment, hiring, and retention as areas needing improvement (page 151). It also requires the department to determine the correct number of officers for the force:

BPD will complete a comprehensive staffing study to assess the appropriate number of sworn and civilian personnel to perform the functions necessary for BPD to fulfill its mission, enable supervision, and satisfy the requirements of this Agreement.

Much has been made by the mayor and police commissioner (former Commissioner Kevin Davis and current Commissioner Darryl De Sousa) about the department’s need to build back to 3000 officers, and how much overtime is currently costing the city. However, there are reasons to question that number, and the Consent Decree will take a hard look at the city’s needs and what staffing level is really required.

Much of the police overtime is a result of covering unfilled shifts, with many officers historically being ‘drafted’ to fill those shifts with little to no notice. That means that an officer would go to work, expecting to work their normal shift, and then be told at the end of their shift that they would need to stay for a second shift. Fortunately, the officer with whom I rode along with said that the practice of forced overtime is less of an issue as its becoming planned overtime instead. He also worked a 19-hour shift on the day I rode along with him because of a planned second shift.

The consent decree has much more in the two sections on hiring and staffing, which will change the details of those processes, but the general framework of the recruitment process will stay the same. The framework includes:

Civil service test

Physical agility test

Preliminary interview

Background investigation

Polygraph examination

Psychological examination

One of the big changes will be how the department attracts potential recruits. The Consent Decree mandates the development of a recruitment plan which increases “the diversity of its ranks, including race and gender, and applicants who are community policing and problem-solving oriented.”

Beyond creating a pipeline of recruits, everyone who qualifies for admission to the BPD Academy must pass the following steps:

Civil Service Test

This is a written test that evaluates each applicant’s cognitive skills and reading comprehension. This is not something that requires advanced study; it’s mainly reading the material in the test, and then answering questions about it. Applicants need to score 70% to pass. The schedule for this test is on their hiring website.

Physical Agility Test

The next step is a physical agility test, where they make sure applicants can do 29 sit ups in one minute, 20 push-ups push-ups in 1 minute (10 push-ups for women), a 1.5 mile run in 16:28, and demonstration of dry-firing a handgun.

Preliminary Interview

A traditional employment interview where they make sure applicants are a good fit for the department before getting started on the more intensive and costly parts of the hiring process.

Background Investigation

The background investigation is similar to what the federal government does for its background checks. They have applicants fill out a form asking where they have lived, worked, and went to school. Then they verify this information and talk to people who might have known the person.

Part of this is to make sure the applicants are being truthful about their pasts, and part is to find out what kind of person they are. An applicant lying about their past is a big red flag, but so is a checkered past. In the end, this is a judgement call by the BPD about what set of circumstances are a deal breaker. However, lying is worse.

Background investigations were previously done by Baltimore Police officers, but this was leading to long hiring timelines. It commonly took 5–6 months to get through this section of the hiring process. As of December 2017, the department is starting to use an outside company, Kentech Inc, which will speed the background check to about a month and free up BPD resources.

The Consent Decree mandates background investigation look more closely at previous employment, especially if the candidate was an officer in the past. The candidate’s history of using lethal and less lethal force, use-of-force training records and complaint history will all be considered. Any previous civil action against the individual will be considered, as well as things the candidate has posted on social media. It may seem intrusive, but the Consent Decree is mandating all of these changes.

The background investigation is heavily regulated by the Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR) section 12.04.01.05, which has many more details about the process and what is collected.

Polygraph Examination

Our presenter, Major James Handley, said that the polygraph was required by the COMAR, but I was not able to find where that was. The Consent Decree makes no mention of the polygraph, which likely means this pseudo-scientific Ouija board will continue to be used.

This is the method they use for verifying all of the information they have on the applicant. Sure, polygraphs are such garbage science that they are not even admissible in court. And sure, there are ways to train yourself to pass a polygraph while lying. And sure, polygraphs aren’t even very good at detecting lies. And yeah, even the government understands how garbage they are when they passed the Employee Polygraph Protection Act in 1988. But government agencies and police departments across the country still use them.

I hope it doesn’t seem like I hate, hate, hate the polygraph.

Psychological Examination

The psychological exam used is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory that diagnoses mental illnesses and helps predict officer integrity.

How is BPD going to fill these openings?

There are a few ways BPD will try to fill the existing openings, and make up for the normal attrition.

Allowing prior marijuana use — it used to be that pot was an automatic disqualifier, but now the rules have been loosened to only look at the last three years. However, dealing any amount of pot is still an automatic disqualifier.

Police cadet program — To apply to the police department, applicants must be at least 20.5 years old. For those who are between 18 and 20.5 and have a high school degree, they have a cadet program that was reestablished in 2017 to get people in the pipeline before they can officially be officers.

The hiring pipeline is being expedited by outsourcing the background investigation.

The application process will become paperless, reducing the paper management process.

Online applications are scheduled to begin sometime in 2018.

Educational incentive pay will be offered to lieutenants, sergeants, and officers.

Tuition assistance for training and college is available.

$2500 property tax credit for officers that living in the city is now available.

Retention

Improving the hiring pipeline is very important to growing the department, but so is retention of high quality officers. The Consent Decree requiresthe BPD to describe how it will use incentives, perks (like access to fitness facilities or educational reimbursement), and developmental programs that allow high performing officers to rotate into roles they are interested in.

Major Handley expressed how he wanted to get to the point where some of the zero-tolerance crimes of that past would not be hiring disqualifiers. He was optimistic that the BPD was moving in that direction.

The efforts being made seem to be helping recruitment. Through November 2017, applications to the department are up 29% from 2016, and 2017 ended with the first net gain in six years. Also, the graduation rates from the academy have been trending up in recent years. This could mean they are lowering their requirements, but with the consent decree, the department would be in trouble if they started slipping backwards.

Not only that, but many of the topics that have been covered in the Citizen’s Academy have highlighted BPD changes. BPD says it’s aware of the shortcomings they have, and are making serious efforts to address them with the help of the consent decree.

The BPD needs to refill its ranks, and 2017’s academy classes will hopefully start to make a dent. More importantly, BPD is working to train the next cadre of officers in a way that will hopefully make the department a better partner to the citizens of Baltimore.