Hey, we just need to lower the requirements, then we can get enough minority candidates.
http://www.examiner.com/article/police-a...nority-recruitsThe Dayton Police Department is lowering its testing standards for recruits. It's a move required by the U.S. Department of Justice after it says not enough African-Americans passed the exam. Dayton is in desperate need of officers to replace dozens of retirees.
A Beltway watchdog group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption released a report Wednesday regarding its uncovering of hundreds of documents from the city of Dayton, Ohio, revealing that Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama Department of Justice pressured the local police department to lower testing standards because not enough African-American candidates passed the written exam.
On May 25, Judicial Watch had filed a lawsuit against the DOJ to obtain additional records related to the Dayton program after the DOJ failed to respond to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch include Dayton's standards and test materials for police and firefighter candidates produced by Fire & Police Selection, Inc., a company with a 15-year track record of designing and validating tests used to recruit police officers and firefighters.
The documents also include correspondence between the Dayton city officials and the DOJ officials with regard to their analysis of the Dayton recruitment and testing program. (A "Consent Decree" signed by both parties to resolve a discrimination lawsuit filed by the DOJ against the city of Dayton.)
Dayton's government submitted ahead of time its recruitment and testing plans in detail (including its written examination), per the request of the DOJ. Dayton also took steps to focus its recruitment strategy on "minority -- African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, females and other underrepresented minority groups." These plans apparently did not elicit any significant objection from the DOJ until after the tests had been administered and scores were calculated.
"What should anger anyone who cares about fairness and justice -- especially law enforcement officers -- should be outraged by this case. There is no fairness nor is there any justice whenever there's corrupt government practices," said former police union official Fred Peirson.
According to an internal assessment by Fire & Police Selection, Inc., "An exhaustive item-level analysis was conducted on the data from the administration and our statisticians did not identify any significantly problematic items that negatively affected the reliability of the test."