Psych-Exam Snag Delays Cop Academy

The next class of police officer recruits is on hold, while the department scrambles to find a contractor who can administer legally required psychological exams.

The department bungled its search for a psychologist last year after paying a consultant $75,000 to manage the process. The consultant drafted a request for proposals that didn’t ask for any quotes, and no one asked the department’s longtime examiner to enter a bid.

After making a pick, officials discovered problems with the process and decided not to sign the contract.

Instead, officials have gone out to bid again. The second application process closed on Tuesday with two respondents: the state’s only certified specialist with a decade of experience in New Haven and a seven-month-old business originally recommended by the consultant. A winner is expected to be picked soon.

The delay has so far pushed the academy’s next class of 40 cadets back at least two months. Unable to keep up with a wave of senior retirements, Chief Anthony Campbell said, his understaffed force is meanwhile relying on overtime to fill gaps. Averaging $146,000 each week in extra pay, the department is projected to run $3.55 million over budget during the rest of the year, according to the city’s latest finance report.

Chief Anthony Campbell said he sought changes in the selection of psychiatric exam administrators as part of an effort to recruit more cops of color to the force.

“Our ultimate goal is to make this department more reflective of this city, make it a more fair and equitable process for everyone,” he said in an interview. ​“Going into this process, I knew that, when you make any changes, there’s going to be hiccups and definitely going to be questions asked as to why you are changing. We’re trying to make it better, make it a healthier force, which I think it will be in the end.”

A New Shrink

Last spring, Campbell decided to revamp the police department’s application process. He was losing too many applicants from New Haven, particularly women and racial minorities, he said.

He blasted the word out, asking media outlets to publicize the job openings and assigning Sgt. Manmeet Colon to flyer and canvass neighborhoods across the city. He talked about opening programs at Gateway Community College and New Haven Pubic Schools to drum up interest. He loosened some requirements, working with Mayor Toni Harp to change score cut-offs and marijuana use policy. And he tried to switch up the background checks, tasking Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur with finding new investigators.

Campbell also took another look at the psychological exams, which he said was a ​“big part” of why so many local applicants weren’t making it onto the force.

All officers must submit to a psychological examination before being started the training academy, according to William Tanner, the state’s compliance officer for policing standards. But the law doesn’t describe which test must be given, nor does it require a specially certified doctor to administer it. Any clinical psychologist, psychiatrist or social worker who’s already earned a license to practice in the state can do the testing, Tanner said.

Campbell couldn’t produce exact numbers showing how many minority candidates were eliminated in that stage, compared to earlier in the process. But he said he’d heard persistent criticisms that the psych exams discriminated against racial minorities.

“After a while you hear rumors, you hear complaints over a number of years that people are being excluded, that people are not getting a fair shake,” Campbell said. ​“You know how they say there’s some truth to the rumor? Maybe you can’t put your finger on it, but we put it out there so we can get a reset.”

Seeking New Experts

Working closely with the mayor, Campbell made the decision to go out to bid for a new company. That meant ditching Behavioral Health Consultants, the contractor that the police department had used for more than a decade.

The Hamden company conducts pre-employment screenings for 70 different public safety agencies in the state. Its chief evaluator, Mark Kirschner, chairs the psychological services section for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He’s also the only psychologist in Connecticut certified as a specialist in police and public safety.

Kirschner said in an interview that he based his process on the mental fitness standards for cops in California, widely considered to be the field’s best practices.

Those standards require at least two different written tests. The first, an ​“abnormal range” personality test, judges a candidate’s mental instability, such as nervousness or aggression, while the other, a ​“normal range” test, assesses a candidate’s mental suitability, such as empathy, self-control and independence. In other words, the first test eliminates those unfit for the job and the second credits those who are primed to be cops.

In the past, Kirschner has given the Personality Assessment Inventory for the abnormal range and the California Psychological Inventory for the normal range, both commonly used across the country.

The tests must be uniform, Kirschner added. Oftentimes, the screenings are confused with a general clinical evaluation, where questions should reflect patient’s individual differences in making a diagnosis. But that can’t happen in a pre-employment evaluation, he said, because administering different tests based on an applicant’s gender or race would violate federal law. On the flip side, if a screening tool results in minorities being hired at four-fifths the rate of the majority, the employer must demonstrate why it’s a valid predictor of job success to stay on the right side of the law.

Kirschner said that he’d checked his own numbers for these ​“adverse impacts” against women and minorities, but he didn’t find any disparities. He said he couldn’t share any statistics about New Haven because his database combined all his contracted work with many departments across several years.

Kirschner added that the psychological exams sometimes get a bad rap when they’re done out of the recommended order, as New Haven has done in the past. Because it’s narrowly tailored, the test is supposed to be the last step, only for the ​“cream of the crop,” Kirschner said. But when it’s done before the background checks, the test might identify integrity issues that otherwise would have nixed a candidate earlier, ​“giving the false impression they were eliminated in the psychologicals,” Kirschner said.

Campbell said a competitive process would at least add legitimacy to whichever vendor is hired.

“Let’s go out to bid, because if the company we’re using is the best, the best services at the best price, then so be it,” he said. ​“At least we have an answer for those people who are saying the process is tainted. At least we’d be safe from a legal standpoint. We did our due diligence, and we went through a clear and transparent process.”

Consultant Hired

To find the best contractor, Campbell said, the department needed to hire a consultant.

“We are not psychological experts, so we needed someone who works in that field,” he said. ​“We don’t know what to look for.”

On Mar. 7, 2017, the department brought on Maysa Akbar, the founder of Integrated Wellness Group, a psychotherapy practice on Fitch Street focused on children and families, as a consultant for $75,000.

As an instructor in cultural sensitivity at the Yale Child Study Center and a contractor for YouthStat programs with the Board of Education, Akbar ​“had been someone that City Hall had been very familiar with,” Campbell said. He’d also personally seen her credentials on display through VETTS, a mentorship program that pairs at-risk youth with a veteran. And he sometimes made referrals to Integrated Wellness Group for children experiencing traumatic stress.

In a meeting, Chief Campbell said, he, Mayor Toni Harp, Corporate Counsel John Rose, Jr., and Chief Administrative Officer Michael Carter all agreed Akbar would be best for the consulting gig.

Working alongside Maggie Targrove, the city’s deputy director of emergency management, Akbar created a system that could screen out different psychologists, drafting ​“all the parameters of what the bid will look like, because,” Campbell explained, ​“I wouldn’t know how to create those parameters.”

According to a scope of services in her contract, Akbar said she would develop a request for proposals, create timelines and budgets, screen the respondents and select a winner, conduct a site visit, check their qualifications and licensing, and maintain quality. She summed it up in one final bullet point: ​“Project oversight, execution, and implementation.”

Akbar ended up getting paid in two chunks: $43,000 last fiscal year and $32,000 in this one.

Campbell said he didn’t know if the department had hired a consultant to draw up a request for proposals in the past, or for what price. He did know that one advisor came on to help install a new computer system. But ​“no doubt,” he said, consultants will be part of the contracting process going forward.

Round One

In late May, the request for proposals went live on the Purchasing Bureau’s website.

At first, the submission deadline was set for June 20. But Michael Fumiatti, the city’s purchasing agent, later moved the date back to June 27. He said rescheduling is common, particularly if there’s any bad weather.

The change allowed Police and Community Psychology Partners, a company incorporated on June 26, to get its application in on time.

That new venture was founded by Brett Rayford, director of program development at the Solnit Psychiatric Center, two state-run residential facilities for early teens; and Derrick Gordon, director of research on male development at The Consultation Center, a Yale-associated hub for psychiatric study.

Rayford and Gordon knew the consultant. Both spoke on an April 2016 panel with Akbar in support of Rev. Boise Kimber’s proposed all-boys charter school. And they both blurbed Akbar’s October 2017 book, ​“Urban Trauma,” along with Campbell, Harp and Kimber.

Akbar declined to comment for this story, referring questions to Campbell. ​“They are the experts and will be able to break things down for you,” she wrote in an email.

“We were initially informed by the New Haven Police Department that the contract was going to be awarded to us,” Gordon wrote in an email. ​“This is all the information I have.”

Rayford did not respond to emails and a phone message seeking comment on Thursday and Friday.

The other psych-exam applicant in round one was Transition-Integrated-Resources, a business-to-business consultancy in Woodbridge aimed at increasing veteran employment. The company was started by Robert Reed, a Marine Corps veteran who served in the first Gulf War and later managed sales for big brands like General Mills and L’Oreal.

Behavioral Health Consultants, the longtime department contractor, did not apply. ​“We didn’t even know” about the bidding, Kirschner said. ​“No one told us about it. We didn’t have the opportunity.”

As part of the application, both respondents answered nine questions about their qualifications.

They were asked to list their past experience in psychological assessments, write an essay about their ​“concept of community policing,” submit sample tests, document their ​“capacity for objective clinical judgment” and describe their past work with ​“diverse populations and multilingual cultures.”

After meeting with the respondents and tallying the points, Akbar recommended Rayford and Gordon’s Police and Community Psychology Partners for the contract.

No Paperwork

No contract was ever signed, because he didn’t get the required paperwork, Purchasing Agent Fumiatti said. Online, he later listed the first round of bidding as canceled.

“I’m not sure what transpired,” Fumiatti wrote in an email. ​“In any event it was NEVER awarded.” 

It turns out that a personnel change at the police department may have stopped the process.

In the past, Campbell said, he had relied on Michael Piasecki, the supervisor of management services, to get the department’s forms in order. Piasecki had overseen the department’s budgets, payroll, grants and contracts since 1995. But he abruptly retired on Apr. 15, 2017.

“He used to drive me crazy. He was very anal, and he knew his stuff,” Campbell said. ​“The moment a company was selected, Mike would be like, ​‘Where’s this? Where’s that?’ He’d reach out to companies and basically start hounding them.”

In the transition, no one saw the deal through, Campbell said, and a contract was never written.

The chief said he didn’t realize anything was amiss until about two months ago.

“I didn’t worry too much because the psychologicals and polygraph are toward the end of the recruitment process,” he explained.

As the background checks wrapped up, around November, Campbell said he asked Assistant Chief Racheal Cain to firm up the details with the new psychologist, ​“to make sure the contract and paperwork are done.” But after Cain told him that Fumiatti was missing forms, Campbell halted the process.

Cain had tried to track down some of the documents, but as she dug deeper, she found several concerns with the way Police and Community Psychology Partners had been picked. It turns out the firm hadn’t submitted a price in its application. And it didn’t yet have all its paperwork in order. She told Campbell they needed to slow down.

“There were a couple things that we weren’t really happy with,” Cain said in an interview. ​“We want to make sure that we get a qualified company at a price that we can afford.”

Campbell said he decided to go back out to bid a second time, even though it would cost the department time.

“I said, ​‘Wait a minute. There’s a problem here,’” he recalled. ​“Because we’re making a change, because there has been a lot of focus and scrutiny on this process, let’s dot our I’s and cross our T’s. Everything has to be done right. I do not want to place this department in a liability, and I certainly don’t want anyone who goes through the process in the academy to have any question whether it was a legitimate process. Rather than have a situation where it looks like we’re catering to anyone in particular, restart the process.”

Campbell added that it could have been worse — if the department had found out the paperwork wasn’t in order later, say, after the class of recruits had already gone through the test. Worse, someone might have sued, he said.

Round Two

For the second bidding go-around, Fumiatti said he cleaned up the request for proposals. In the new draft, the rubric bumped up the requisite experience to at least five years and clarified that the vague wording about a ​“selection process outline” actually meant ​“cost proposal.”

This time, two groups applied: Police and Community Psychology Partners and Behavioral Health Consultants. Akbar will evaluate both companies and submit a recommendation. The final decision is up to Campbell.

“Ultimately, that’s our choice,” he said. ​“The department will choose the company that it feels is best.”

City lawyers and the purchasing agent will also check the selection for compliance with the state law and local ordinances, Campbell added. ​“There’s probably like five layers of checks and balances to make sure there’s no impropriety,” he said.

Campbell said that vetting will likely put the academy on hold until late April, leaving 130 applicants with conditional offers in limbo. Campbell said he expects the upcoming class will have 40 recruits, and another class of 40 will follow within three months. Picked from the same list, the two classes will run simultaneously, he told police commissioners in December. Another 24 recruits will go through state trainings this year, he added.

The department needs to hand out all those badges soon, as a wave of employees reach their 20 years of service, including Campbell himself in two weeks, he pointed out. ​“There are a lot of people who can and are retiring,” he said. ​“I don’t plan on doing that, but I would say there’s probably 15 – 20 people who have respectfully made clear they are in the process of applying to other jobs.”