Altered police exams unveiled

On Wednesday morning, when the Newport Beach Police Department promoted three of its officers in a ceremony, the force looked to put well more than a year of litigation, investigations and morale issues behind it.

Thanks to some outside consulting from Donnoe & Associates, a firm that specializes in creating promotion exams for public organizations, Newport Beach seems to have taken a leap toward restoring its officers’ faith in a system that had seen a lieutenant rise to chief in less than two years through broken rules and a sergeant repeatedly passed over for promotions based on false rumors that he was gay.

Donnoe & Associates was paid $16,000 to help create a new test for the sergeants and lieutenants promotional exams. The city does not plan on using the firm routinely, said Human Resources Director Terri Cassidy. The chief and other department experts used to have a larger role in creating the test, but have taken on a more advisory role while the Human Resources Department and Donnoe & Associates has handled the minutiae of the process, Cassidy said.

“I think it’s about a 100% turnaround in confidence in the process,” Cassidy said.

In promoting Jon Lewis to lieutenant, and Steve Rasmussen and Joe Cartwright to sergeant, the city unveiled a revised exam that removed much of the subjectivity — or at least the appearance of subjectivity — from a process that many officers had come to view skeptically.

Rigid requirements

Officers aiming for a higher rank now have half of their promotional score based on an interview with officers already in that rank who ask them a pre-determined set of questions to ensure fairness.

All the interviewers are regarded as the best and brightest from other Orange County police agencies and have no ties to the candidates or the department, Cassidy said.

In years past, the value of this panel on a candidate’s score was about a third.

Candidates for sergeant go through a three-part exam — an oral panel with some work-related exercises, a written exam and a review by superiors — and are scored. After all parts are completed, the candidates are ranked and one of the top three is selected.

Under both Police Chiefs Bob McDonell and John Klein, Newport Beach police unions encountered problems with how the oral panels were conducted.

In McDonell’s case, he took the unprecedented step of acting as a rater in the year that Klein was looking to become a captain. Klein ended up being the top-ranked candidate and was promoted to captain. McDonell said that no one objected at the time.

When Klein was chief, he attempted to do the same thing in 2008 for the captain’s exam. Human Resources rebuked the idea after officers complained. Instead Fire Department Chief Steve Lewis took Klein’s place. Now, retired-Lt. Steve Shulman has filed a claim against the city claiming that year’s tests were biased.

Not as important

In both the new sergeant and lieutenant exams, the city is putting less emphasis on the evaluations by a candidate’s superior officers.

City officials maintain this was not a direct result of Lt. Neil Harvey’s lawsuit against the city last year, but acknowledged lessons were learned from that case. In early 2008, the city lost a lawsuit to then-Sgt. Harvey, who claimed he was passed over for promotions based on false rumors that he was a homosexual. Current and former officers testified to rumors they had heard about Harvey’s sexuality.

Steven Fong, now an officer in Huntington Beach, equated the Newport Beach Police Department to high school.

“You were either in the in-crowd or the out-crowd,” Fong testified. “The rumor mill is crazy.”

Newport Beach relied on department evaluations showing that Harvey consistently received low scores in some key areas. Those evaluations however, proved to be given infrequently and not always from superiors who had even worked with Harvey. As part of a settlement with the city, Harvey was awarded $1.45 million, promoted to lieutenant and doesn’t have to report to duty until he retires in March, when he turns 50.

The way candidates were assessed was “somewhat destructive,” Cassidy said. “We wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.”

Through lessons learned from that case and recommendations from a committee formed by Klein to look into promotions, evaluations will now be done regularly and reviews will only done by superiors who have directly worked with promotional candidates, Cassidy said.

Promotions should no longer be perceived as a “popularity contest,” she said. Department bosses’ ratings are only 25% of a candidate’s score in both ranks — a reduction from 50% for lieutenants and 35% for sergeants — and they have to make their ratings based on specific criterion, she said. Candidates are allowed to check on how their superiors ranked them after the test.

“People will have trust and faith that it was fair, objective and job-related,” she said. “It will also be a good training tool for everybody so that they knew how they did and could do better in the future ... It’s become kind of a positive thing, not so much of a scary and negative thing.”

In the lieutenant’s exam, the written portion was removed.

Adding in current, interim-Police Chief Robert Luman’s changes to the promotional process and the department is looking at a substantially less-controversial method.

“We haven’t had any major or minor complaints as of yet,” said Officer Dave Syvock, president of the Newport Beach Police Assn., which represents rank-and-file officers and non-sworn personnel. “One of the goals we were trying to achieve in the promotional committee was to develop a process with a perception of fairness,” he said. “The process we ran through definitely gave that perception.”

No more rounding

Last fall, Luman removed two other parts of the process that had struck a nerve with candidates: Scores were rounded to whole numbers, which created ties in the final rankings, and the potential to promote was limited to only the top eight performers after two-thirds of the way through the whole process.

City officials corrected another snag a year before that, when they found that officers were working with the department after retirement under invalid contracts. Officers working under those contracts, critics argued, kept spots filled that should have been rightfully open for full-time officers to promote into.

If the tone from the Police Management Assn., which represents officers ranked sergeants and above, is any indication, the city is moving in the right direction. Just a year ago the union was calling for a retesting for the chief position that Klein had filled and for an investigation into promotions.

“The newest test recently developed and implemented appeared to provide acceptable controls to eliminate many of the problems encountered by candidates in preceding exams,” said union President Mark Hamilton. “We look forward to continuing to work with the city, Chief Luman, and eventually the next police chief, in order to maintain a positive working environment for our membership and the community.”

Changes In The Newport Beach Police Department Promotional Process

 Greater weight is given to scores by officers from outside agencies interviewing candidates.

 Less weight is given to interdepartmental evaluations by candidate’s superiors.

 Interdepartmental evaluations are less subjective.

 Interdepartmental evaluations for candidates are limited to officers who worked with the candidate.

 The police chief and department staff have less direct control over testing criterion and wording.