Maryland State Police Chief Roland Butler. File photo by Bryan P. Sears.
The Maryland State Police agreed to change the way it tests recruits, saying it will pay $2.75 million to 48 women and black applicants who were turned down for trooper jobs after failing recruitment tests that later became were considered discriminatory.
The actions, approved Wednesday by the Board of Public Works, are part of a consent decree governing a two-year civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into hiring and promotion practices by the department.
The investigation found that police “engaged in a pattern or practice of unintentional discrimination against African American and female applicants” for entry-level trooper jobs through the use of written and physical tests that disproportionately disqualified these applicants. The rejected recruits applied to the police recruitment classes from 2017 to today.
Col. Roland Butler, superintendent of the Maryland State Police, emphasized Wednesday that the Justice Department determined the discrimination was unintentional. But he also said the department agreed with the findings and that the agency was “committed to meaningful and lasting change.”
“The fact remains that 48 men and women were denied the opportunity to serve and protect their communities unfairly and unintentionally denied this opportunity,” Butler said during testimony before the board. “Discrimination in any form has no place in the Maryland State Police and will not be tolerated.”
The investigation focused on two tests that are part of the process — including background checks, drug tests and interviews — of hiring a new soldier.
The selection test for police officers is a written test of a candidate’s skills in arithmetic, reading, writing and grammar. A passing grade is 70%, and potential officers can retake the test up to four times a year in an attempt to pass. Candidates who fail will be eliminated from the program.
For the Functional Fitness Assessment Test, candidates must do 18 push-ups in a minute and 27 sit-ups in a minute, run 1.5 miles in 15 minutes and 20 seconds and be able to reach 1.5 inches past their toes while sit down to test their flexibility. All four parts of the test must be successfully completed to pass, but applicants can attempt three times per year before being eliminated.
However, according to the Justice Department study, the skills assessed in these two tests were not actually essential to a trooper’s job performance. And while 91% of white applicants ultimately passed the POST test, only 71% of black applicants passed. In the physical test, 51% of women passed, compared to 81% of men.
“The Department of Justice found that MdSP (Maryland State Police) used discriminatory hiring practices that improperly disqualified Black and female state trooper candidates,” said Sarah Marquardt, an assistant U.S. attorney involved in the case.
In addition to a cash payment, police will offer jobs, with seniority dating back to the year they applied, to at least 25 of the 48 Black and female applicants rejected since 2017, under the settlement. The agency will also develop new tests, overseen by the Department of Justice, that are non-discriminatory.
Because it will take some time to develop the new tests, the Justice Department has agreed to allow police to continue using the two flawed tests, but with relaxed standards — no time limit for completing the run or the push-ups, for example. But that concerned Treasurer Dereck Davis and Comptroller Brooke Lierman, who, along with the governor, make up the Board of Public Works.
“Why are we still doing it? … Why aren’t they completely eliminated?” Davis asked about the tests. “If it has nothing to do with the position, it doesn’t have to be part of the process.”
Davis worried that by removing objective standards such as time limits for the physical test, outcomes would be more subjective, which “lends itself to being more discriminatory.”
But Butler said it is important to hold the tests, with relaxed standards, so police have a baseline for applicants and can potentially help them focus on areas where they can improve.
Davis also raised concerns Wednesday about a request from the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services for $70,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by an inmate who alleged corrections staff used excessive force during a search of his home. Davis said he fears the state will settle too quickly and pay out millions as a result.
“Why are we settling?” Davis asked. “It seems like we’re looking at how much more we could pay (by going to court), and I look at it as how much more we could save.”
He estimated the board spent $10 million on settlements last year and wanted to know why the department wasn’t taking more cases to court.
‘It seems like there is a certain reluctance to take a case to court. I’m just going to say it, are we afraid of black jurors and black juries, especially when the [inmates] are black?” asked Davis, who is black.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Joseph Sedtal, the deputy secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said the department is also not happy with the payouts. But he said the decision to settle a case is not determined by the racial makeup of a potential jury, but by the facts of each case and a recent general trend of increasing verdicts in all jury trials.
“With each of these, it’s a cost-benefit analysis,” Sedtal said. “Do we think a jury will return a verdict in the six- to seven-figure range, or does a $50,000 settlement make sense?”
He said the board only sees the cases that have been resolved, and not the cases the department is contesting.
“About 90-91% of these cases are ultimately ruled out,” Sedtal said.
The case settled Wednesday was frustrating for Davis, as corrections officials said they believe the officer involved largely followed a 15-step protocol for a strip search. However, due to privacy concerns, there is no video of the actual strip search and Sedtal said what actually happened in that short time frame becomes “our word against theirs.”
“And their word is more credible than yours,” Davis said. “That’s essentially what we’re saying.”
“I would like to view settlements as a rarity, rather than a regularity,” said Davis, who worried that “the word is out” among inmates that the state will settle.
Lierman asked Sedtal for data on the number of cases prosecuted and won by the department, compared to the number of cases resolved.
“Are you actually litigating about this? If so, what is your success rate?” she asked.
“If someone has been wronged, we must pay that person and the worker must be retrained or released,” Lierman said. “But we cannot allow strip searches done properly to cost the state $50,000 each.”
