Is there a cheating scandal brewing at IMPD? Public Safety Director David Wantz has confirmed to WTHR's Steve Jefferson that promotions within the department have been placed on hold while the department reviews recent testing results that would allow police officers to be promoted to a higher rank within the department through the merit system. Wantz is concerned that as many as 14 officers scored a perfect 100 on the exam and several others scored a 99, which senior officers say has never happened before in the history of the department.
A top priority of the department's current chief, Rick Hite, is to not only hire more minority police officers but also promote more minority candidates to higher positions within the department. Minority officers have complained in the past that the testing system for promotions was biased against minority police officers, who scored lower than average on the tests compared to their white counterparts. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a federal district court ruling dismissing a lawsuit brought by minority IMPD officers challenging the department's promotion policy a few years ago.
Perhaps changes in the test administered are responsible for more officers scoring much higher on the test. There are rumors that a select number of test-takers had access to an online tutorial website where answers to all of the questions were available. Mayor-elect Joe Hogsett has not announced yet whether he will make changes in IMPD's leadership when he takes office on January 1. In fact, he's yet to announce a single major appointment to his administration.
No surprise here. IPD was always good at promoting exactly who they wanted.
ReplyDeleteAny big city F.D. do not go any better. Rumor has it a African-American Battalion Chief distributed helpful information to a Black Association group with instructions that the information was not to distributed outside the association. This may have been information gained from his S.M.E. (Subject Matter Expert) part-time employment gig with those who administered the both PD and FD"s promotion process. Oh yeah, The discriminatory information was sent through F.D.'s E-mail system. One more pesky detail, our Chief may have known about this anomaly prior to FD's merit commission meeting and withheld that and other inconsistencies in test scoring the same as PD's.
ReplyDeleteRumors are rampant that a now Battalion Chief was allowed to re-take the assessment center portion of the test due to "incomplete" instructions, originally only 27 of the 125 or so LT. candidates passed the initial written test so 18ish questions were "thrown out" to achieve a better ratio, Additionally, FD had some people who received exceptionally high 96% and above scores on the assessment center evaluation portion as well.
Has any local Fire Departments lost a recent court battle involving racial discrimination? I don't know..maybe?
Either this particular group of IMPD promotion candidates is the biggest group of geniuses ever hired, or someone broke into the proverbial teacher's desk and got the test answers before the test. I'll admit that's a pretty good job of memorization presuming the test administrator allows nothing in the exam area prior to the test - no papers, no smartphones.
ReplyDeleteLet's see what the new Mayor does?? Guess what nothing will happen.
ReplyDeleteHite's role in this mess should provide Hogsett the excuse he's looking for to get rid of him.
ReplyDeleteseveral people have seen that supposed email including myself. Unlike the FOP, FD 416 would never challenge the admin. 23 captains and only 7 spots
ReplyDeleteI believe a class-action lawsuit over the inadequacy, insufficiency and flat-out cheating on this process will be next for Mayor Empty Suit and his fill-in the Hogster.
ReplyDelete