How Not to Hire Really, Really Bad Cops:
The Tyre Nichols Tragedy
On October third the New York Post reported[1] that three former Memphis officers were convicted of charges of witness tampering; the officers are still charged with second-degree murder in state court.
The deadly beating of Tyre Nichols shocked citizens - not only in Memphis Tennessee, and the United States, but internationally. A quick review of international news sites on the day after his death revealed that his death and the aftermath were lead stories in publications in Canada, France, Australia, Germany, and the UK.
Beyond the bare bones of the tragic events, some news outlets look to the whys of the events (“experts cite a 'breakdown' in police procedures” [2]). But the breakdown of police procedures is not the ‘why’. Nor is it - to coin a popular phrase - ‘the root cause’. The cause rests with the nature of the officers involved.
To ask how they could have demonstrated such poor (to put it mildly) decision-making and abandon established procedures are worthy questions. But to understand what happened in Memphis and to prevent such things from happening in the future demands an answer to a more fundamental question: Why were these guys hired?
If you want to know why this happened and look to prevent a repeat of the events, I suspect that you need only look to the hiring process. Did an I/O (Industrial/Organizational) psychologist tell the police service that these were good candidates?
Most police services employ at least a licensed psychologist with some experience in forensics and organizational consulting as part of an officer selection process. In fact, much of my career as a forensic and I/O psychologist involved police officer selection.
A psychologist’s role when helping a police service to select potentially good police officers from a pool of citizen applicants varies by police service. On the face of it though, the psychologist’s job is quite straightforward - avoid psychologically unsuitable candidates. More specifically, attempt to guide a police service to avoid selecting applicants who might be prone to such things as triggering complaints from the public for rude behaviour, who might be highly susceptible to a stress reaction, or who are more likely than the average applicant to exhibit poor integrity if hired.
We set the bar much higher than eliminating the type of individual who would beat a person to death.
The psychologist does not rely on anything magical to make his or her recommendations. Rigorous testing and a follow-up interview of at least one hour forms the basis for a psychologist’s opinion regarding hiring.
At bare minimum psychologists evaluating police applicants attempt to answer five questions about an applicant for the police service:
What does the applicant’s background, usually from at least a cursory police background investigation of an applicant, tell us about the applicant?
Does the applicant presently exhibit any overt signs of a mental illness?
Is the applicant of at least average cognitive ability? (That is, does he or she have an IQ in the normal range or above?)
What do tests of psychopathology (that is, ‘abnormal’ personality characteristics reflecting mental illness) tell us about a candidate - compared to other candidates and to the ‘normal’ population?
What sorts of ‘normal’ personality characteristics does the candidate possess compared the average man or woman?
By way of example, within the past few two years I have seen psychological test results which identified potential problems with applicants. The narrative report which applied research related to individuals with psychological profiles similar to that of that one applicant read in part:
[If hired he] is more likely than most police officers to exhibit overbearing behaviour that results in complaints from the public. He is also more likely than most police officers to exhibit difficulties leading to integrity violations, and investigations about conduct unbecoming a police officer.
Statements from that narrative report are based upon numerous research studies with the particular test used and comparisons to thousands of police applicants throughout North America.
Beyond the testing is the psychologist’s interview. I ask many ‘what have you done?’ as well as ‘what would you do?’ questions. I ask about controversial issues. I ask applicants about lines they won’t cross, and what they do when pressured by others. I ask them to give examples from their lives if they can.
Of course, such assessment will not exclude every potential problem candidate. I have been fooled by the occasional psychopath (fortunately caught by suggestions I made for further inquiry which I referred back to the background investigator), and in one case I missed warning signs to which I ought to have paid more attention. Furthermore, police services often baulk at the cost of such assessments.
But while involving a qualified I/O and Forensic psychologist in the hiring process can be expensive, one terrible hire can result in hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars in expenses to a police agency. The bad hire can also damage the reputation of the predominantly good officers in all police services. More importantly, if a psychologist can help a police agency avoid one citizen’s death at the hands of an individual who should never have been hired, it would seem like a reasonable price to pay.
References
[1]https://nypost.com/2024/10/03/us-news/verdicts-reached-for-3-former-memphis-officers-charged-in-the-fatal-beating-of-tyre-nichols/
[2] (Business Insider) https://www.businessinsider.com/live-memphis-protests-tyre-nichols-video-body-cam-footage-release-2023-1