DOJ Pressured City of Dayton to Lower Testing Standards for Police Recruits to Accommodate Minority Candidates

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has uncovered hundreds of documents from the City of Dayton, Ohio, showing that Department of Justice (DOJ) officials pressured the Dayton Police Department to lower testing standards because not enough African American candidates passed the written exam. {snip}

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch include the City of Dayton’s standards and test materials for police and firefighter candidates produced by Fire & Police Selection, Inc., a company with a 15-year track record of designing and validating tests used to recruit police officers and firefighters. {snip}

The City of Dayton submitted ahead of time its recruitment and testing plans in detail (including its written examination), per the request of the DOJ. Dayton also took steps to focus its recruitment strategy on “minority–African-Americans, Hispanic, Asian, Females and other underrepresented minority groups.” These plans apparently did not elicit any significant objection from the DOJ until after the tests had been administered and scores were calculated.

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In a letter dated February 7, 2011, DOJ Senior Attorney Barbara Thawley informed the City of Dayton that the DOJ rejected the written portion of the Dayton examination: “The United States has determined that the City’s proposed use of the written examination…violates…the Civil Rights Act of 1964…because it has a statistically significant disparate impact upon African American candidates…” The letter closed by threatening court action. A subsequent letter on February 17, 2011, suggests the written exam be used as a “pass/fail” screening device, which the DOJ described as a “compromise.”

The DOJ also objected to the use of a written test in general for firefighter applicants. “With regard to the writing portion for firefighter, it seems unusual to me. I have never seen a fire department give a writing test to entry level firefighter applicants. From what I know about the job, it seems very unlikely that an entry-level firefighter would have to do much writing,” wrote Ms. Thawley. “All of our firefighters are either EMT or paramedics and do a lot of report writing,” responded Giselle S. Johnson, Secretary and Chief Examiner, Civil Service Board.

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According to a report by Dayton’s ABC News affiliate on March 11, 2011, the ultimate compromise struck between the City of Dayton and the DOJ resulted in a lowering of test standards for Police Department candidates:

The Dayton Police Department is lowering its testing standards for recruits. It’s a move required by the U.S. Department of Justice after it says not enough African-Americans passed the exam. Dayton is in desperate need of officers to replace dozens of retirees. The hiring process was postponed for months because the D.O.J. rejected the original scores provided by the Dayton Civil Service Board, which administers the test.

Under the previous requirements, candidates had to get a 66% on part one of the exam and a 72% on part two. The D.O.J. approved new scoring policy only requires potential police officers to get a 58% and a 63%. That’s the equivalent of an ‘F’ and a ‘D’.

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