Police: Through a Fine Screen

As a result of their recent appearance on TV, Chicago’s police will have to work hard to erase the impression that they are a gang of undisciplined bullies. Whatever their image, though, the fact is that Mayor Daley’s cops are among the most carefully screened in the nation.

To begin with, each candidate is asked to write a brief autobiography specifically aimed at revealing emotional instability. He then takes a psychological sentence-completion test and an exam known as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. If his responses raise any doubts about him, the candidate must go before a board of three psychiatrists. About 40% of the applicants each year are rejected because of either the psychological tests or a past record of instability turned up in a background check. At the police academy, the new recruit takes the California Test of Mental Maturity, the Watson-Glaser Judgmental Test, a Rorschach inkblot test, a picture-memory test and the Thematic Apperception Test. At any time during his training or six-month probationary period, a recruit’s superior may order him to appear before the psychiatric board, which may recommend his dismissal.

Lie-Detector Test. Psychologists agree that every batch of fresh police recruits includes a small percentage who are attracted by the idea of force and like the feeling, as a retired officer in New Orleans put it, “that you carry half the power of God on your hip.” Chicago’s is one of a growing number of departments—about 10% of all the police agencies in the country—that employ sophisticated testing techniques to identify character disorders early.

Big-city departments such as Los Angeles and Boston generally use a variety of tests combined with psychiatric interviews. A number of departments throw in a polygraph (lie detector) test.

Detroit had its own test prepared. It is a 100-question exam that Medical Director Dr. George Moriarty says sifts out “emotional instability, stress and strain, sadistic inclinations, those not really interested in a police career, borderline cases and homos.” In Cincinnati, groups of ten police applicants at a time take part in two-hour bull sessions on such topics as homosexuality and minority groups. Psychologists listen in, and observe their every move.

Invasion of Privacy. Many police chiefs believe that such tests are an invasion of an applicant’s privacy. Small towns claim that they are too expensive (cost of testing and interviewing a single recruit in Portland, Ore.: $100). And even New York cops normally take no personality tests. Instead, a team of 74 investigators prepares personal histories of up to 40 pages on each candidate after weeks of interviews with people who know him.

Nowhere is the psychiatric approach to screening more distrusted than in the South and Southwest. None of the big cities in Texas, Oklahoma or New Mexico, for example, employ a psychiatrist or psychologist to look over job candidates. Atlanta Police Chief Herbert Jenkins relies on dozens of interviews with the applicant’s acquaintances. “We’re looking for a man who is able to get along with people, period,” says Jenkins. “That may sound very amateurish, but it’s the best psychological test that can be made.”

Absence of Inhibitions. One of those who feel that some undesirable attitudes may be learned on the job and cannot be predicted by testing is Investigator Jay Dixon, who screens applicants for the Seattle Police Department. “Psychologists warn us that prejudice is learned,” Dixon says. “Put a man in the central Negro area and after he’s been called names and spit at, he’ll be prejudiced.” A City University of New York sociologist, Arthur Neiderhoifer, agrees that the very nature of a cop’s duties tends to “transform him into an authoritarian agent of control.” Neiderhoffer, a New York policeman for more than 20 years, writes in his book, Behind the Shield: “The hostility and fear that almost palpably press against a policeman in lower-class areas aggravate his impulse to ‘get tough.’ ”

Dr. Clifton Rhead, a member of the Chicago Police Psychiatric Board, believes that an effective policeman has, among other traits, “suspiciousness, aggressiveness, a tendency to act on impulse, a readiness to take risks, a strong sense of right and wrong and an absence of inhibitions that would make a man freeze in certain situations.” These qualities can “break through” during violent scenes such as those in Chicago two weeks ago.

The Real Blame. Rhead does not find it surprising that the police reacted to stress the way they did in Chicago. “I would expect that every policeman felt that he was doing his duty.” The real blame, according to Rhead, “falls on the leadership, from the lieutenant up to the mayor. I think it is possible to control such a situation with effective and tight leadership.” Instead, Daley did nothing but encourage force by making it clear long before the convention that he considered the protesters to be an ill-kempt, subversive and alien breed to whom the city would not yield an inch. And in the wild melees shown on TV, few officers seemed to be around to urge a more temperate attitude.

Whatever the cause of the debacle, further research is plainly needed to determine what goes into the making of a good, dependable cop tolerant of the rights of others. A Justice Department-financed study that may be the most far-reaching investigation of the topic so far is due to be released later this month. Ironically enough, the subjects for the study, which involved two years of intensive psychological testing, were 2,000 Chicago policemen.