How Do You Judge Whether a Police Officer Is Mentally Fit for the Job?
Five New York Police Department recruits had been eager to graduate in August after spending six months in the academy. They had spent hours studying the law and political science and had undergone physical training. But three months later, they still report to the academy, where they have been relegated to administrative tasks or chores like mopping floors.
They, along with 25 full-fledged officers, had failed department psychological exams or background checks. A commanding officer who cleared them to join the department never should have done so, the department said. The 25 officers were stripped of their shields and guns in July.
The police officers’ union, the Police Benevolent Association, is fighting the city’s efforts to fire the officers and recruits, arguing in court filings that their records have been clean.
It’s a legal battle born out of an exam that some say unfairly sidelines candidates who struggled as adolescents or were treated for depression and other common mental health problems. Others say that candidates of color are more likely to be penalized on the test than their white peers.
“Psychological evaluations have been a constant problem,” said Lt. Patrick Gordon, the president of the Guardians Association, an organization representing Black officers.
But city lawyers said those targeted for dismissal have serious problems in their backgrounds: One had a driving history that included striking a pedestrian, eight license suspensions and $6,000 in unpaid parking tickets. Another admitted to paying a stripper and a masseuse for sex. Another acknowledged a “history of arrests and violations of law,” the city said in a filing.
But in interviews, a dozen officers and candidates, as well as psychologists and a lawyer who handle appeals, said that rejections are often based on assessments of behavior that could be characterized as normal, youthful transgressions — shoplifting and cutting class in high school, or getting caught with marijuana or a fake identification card.
In New York, all candidates for the police academy must pass a background check, a physical fitness test, a medical exam, and a two-part psychological test that includes written true-or-false questions that take about five hours to complete and an interview with one of the department’ psychologists.
The Police Department declined to provide figures showing how often minorities, or recruits in general, fail the mental health exam but said that in a poll of recruits who graduated in August, 88.5 percent of them said they were “very satisfied” with the professionalism of the department’s psychologists.
Brad Weekes, a police spokesman, said members of the most recent graduating class speak 29 different languages and come from 35 countries, undercutting the argument that the department sidelines minorities.
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He said the department, where 33 percent of uniformed officers are Hispanic and 17 percent are Black, was “focused on hiring qualified officers who reflect the diversity of the city they protect and serve.”
“The members of the N.Y.P.D. are more diverse than ever before,” he said.
A candidate who fails the exam can appeal to the police division that assesses candidates, and finally to the Civil Service Commission, an independent city agency that has the final word on appeals. Usually, candidates hire a lawyer and an outside psychologist for an independent assessment, a process that can be expensive and has no guarantee of success.
Mr. Weekes said the hiring process is fair, reflected in the fact that the department’s psychological assessment section has not lost an appeal to the commission in three years.
City lawyers have argued that the department moved to fire the 30 officers because they failed tests meant to weed out candidates who cannot handle the stress of a difficult job. The department “needed to correct the wrong” made when the commander, Terrell Anderson, hired people unsuitable for the job, said Marina Sukkonik, a city lawyer, during a court hearing.
“What if in the future something happens?” she said. “We are protecting the safety of the public.”
John Saint Jeance, 32, who twice applied for the academy and was rejected, said he was taken aback when the psychologist who interviewed him in 2024 accused him of lying after he tried to explain why a business he had started in Florida had failed.
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“He was screaming at me,” he said. “I did not feel comfortable with the N.Y.P.D. psychologist. Not at all. He looked like he was trying to find a way to disqualify me.”
Mr. Saint Jeance has worked as a special officer in New York hospitals for two years — a job that required him to pass a psychological exam. He received a notice of disqualification last year telling him there were concerns over his “social competence,” “integrity,” “emotional regulation” and “decision-making.”
Mr. Saint Jeance sent half a dozen letters from supervisors and hired a lawyer and a psychologist to appeal the decision. He said he paid a total of $5,900 on both appeals and still lost.
“I can’t believe I was rejected,” he said.
Another candidate failed after confessing to losing a bartending job over an argument with his manager and to fighting with men who pushed a friend, according to an appeal written by Robert Daley, a psychologist. The department’s examiner faulted that candidate for not “retreating from the situation and calling law enforcement.”
In his appeal, Dr. Daley said the examiner “should not be entrusted with the screening of normal, healthy young men and women, who sometimes find themselves in dangerous situations of this kind.”
Dr. Daley has examined hundreds of candidates who appealed and said most of the time he agrees with the department’s assessments.
But, he said, the department often disqualifies candidates who sought therapy or said they once used medication to treat anxiety or depression.
The department has a “troubling practice” of punishing candidates “because they made the adaptive and responsible choice to seek mental health support,” said Mark Lerner, another psychologist who handles appeals.
“It’s the candidates who are honest enough to disclose this that get jammed up,” Dr. Lerner said. “It’s just not right.”
Thomas Coghlan, who worked as a department psychologist for eight years before retiring in 2018, now handles both appeals and assessments for police agencies. Dr. Coghlan said during his time in the department, he and his colleagues tried hard to keep racial and cultural biases out of their work.
“By trade and by training, psychologists are extremely sensitive to multicultural issues,” he said.
But department psychologists also err heavily on the side of caution, and as a result, a suitable candidate may be rejected, he said.
“If I’m looking to give someone that immense amount of power, which way would I rather be wrong?” he said, adding that a psychologist “would prefer to deny somebody a job and be wrong than to give somebody the job and be wrong.”
Robert Kronenberg, a Suffolk County lawyer and retired New York police captain, said he has handled hundreds of appeals. He cited cases in which candidates were deemed unfit because they said they were big drinkers in college or had a grade-point average that was under 3.0, when the department requires only a 2.0.
By far, the most common reason people were rejected was seeking help with mental health, he said.
“I’ve lost count of the number of disqualifications that I’ve done where the candidate had a history of using psychotropic medication or even counseling,” Mr. Kronenberg said. “I don’t know anyone who hasn’t gone to counseling.”
Lieutenant Gordon, from the organization representing Black officers, said that the disqualifications fall disproportionately on Black and Hispanic candidates. Union lawyers said that most of the officers who the department moved to fire are minorities.
Lieutenant Gordon said he has fielded complaints from minority candidates who felt penalized because they had different upbringings and experiences growing up in New York than white candidates might have.
He recalled a complaint from one Black candidate who was rejected.
“The psychologist asked him, ‘Do you feel that people are watching you?’” Lieutenant Gordon said. “He said yes and they labeled him as paranoid.”
Lieutenant Gordon addressed those racial concerns in May after the department transferred Inspector Anderson from the candidate assessment division and into the housing unit.
The Guardians, along with nine other fraternal organizations, wrote an open letter calling the hiring process “broken.” Inspector Anderson had tried to fix it by reviewing potential “cultural insensitivities” in the evaluations, language barriers that could lead to a misunderstanding of a candidate’s answers, and “other subjective judgments that disproportionately impacted applicants from marginalized backgrounds,” the letter said.
Under Inspector Anderson, the department hired 2,400 candidates, nearly 25 percent of whom were African American, a “historic increase,” the letter stated.
After the department moved to fire the 30 officers, the Police Benevolent Association immediately won an injunction. A judge told both sides to negotiate a settlement after a hearing in August. Those negotiations continue, according to recent court filings.
During the August hearing, Matthew C. Daly, a lawyer for the union, said Inspector Anderson was in a “classic scapegoat scenario.”
Some of the officers who were hired despite failing the exam have received awards and commendations, according to court filings. But Mr. Daly said the department tried to “condemn” and “humiliate” them.
The judge, Phaedra Perry-Bond, appeared sympathetic.
“There are human beings here that are affected,” she said, just before advising both sides to look for a compromise. “It isn’t just, ‘You shouldn’t have been hired, goodbye.’”
Urvashi Uberoy contributed reporting. Georgia Gee contributed research.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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