No college? Smoked pot? Police still might hire you

Associated Press

HARTFORD, CONN.

Police departments are relaxing age-old standards for accepting recruits, from lowering educational requirements to forgiving some prior drug use, to try to attract more people to their ranks.

The changes are designed to deal with decreased interest in a job that offers low pay, rigorous physical demands and the possibility of getting killed on duty all while under intense public scrutiny. There’s also the question of how to encourage more minorities to become police officers.

“We have a national crisis,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer and now a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

There is no national standard for becoming an officer; it’s left up to each state to set requirements. In general, prior drug use or past brushes with the law, however minor, have been enough to bar someone from becoming an officer. On top of that are physical fitness standards that have long been academy graduation requirements. And even after graduation, recruits often face a background check that might include a credit-history review.

The physical requirements have impeded the hiring of women, while credit histories and education standards have stood in the way of some minorities. Amid the push to diversify, many police departments question whether those long-held, military-style standards are the best ways to attract officers able to relate to communities and defuse tensions.

Departments that are changing testing and other requirements that have been shown to disproportionately disqualify minority candidates were praised in a report released last month by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

People from minority communities are more likely to be disqualified by criminal background and credit checks, because members of those communities are more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system and have lower credit scores, the report says.

A 2013 survey by the U.S. Department of Justice showed that about 12 percent of the nation’s officers were black and 12 percent were Hispanic. The percentages were higher than three decades earlier, but minorities continue to be underrepresented in many communities, according to the department.

The new police diversity report called diversity the linchpin to building trust between law enforcement and communities.

Police officials say they have increased efforts to hire officers of color, including holding recruiting events in cities, targeting minority groups on social media, and visiting military bases and colleges.

The Connecticut State Police is among the agencies wrestling with diversity.

While many departments won’t hire someone who admits to having used marijuana within the previous three years, in Baltimore, where riots took place after a black man died after being transported in a police van, the commissioner is seeking to change the rules – calling it “the No. 1 disqualifier for police applicants.”

“I don’t want to hire altar boys to be police officers, necessarily,” Police Commissioner Kevin Davis told The Baltimore Sun. “I want people of good character, of good moral character, but I want people who have lived a life just like everybody else.”