Status of the current Sergeant's Promotional Exam Scandal

Over the last few months EHPD has been administering promotional exams to fill vacancies for Sergeants, with at least 3 vacancies now and more expected to be opening up shortly. Unfortunately the Town's Human Resources Department has been hard at work botching the whole process from the beginning. First with the written exam, HR gave the applicants the wrong test, instead of taking a Sergeant's exam they were given a test for Lieutenants. Now some blame does lie with the company who sent the wrong test forms, but how did nobody at Town Hall look over the forms they got and verify that they were the right ones? The number and content of questions was different, yet nobody in HR noticed until the Officers taking the test brought it to their attention.

So a second written test was given, this time with the actual test they were supposed to take, and several people passed and oral board interviews were set up. By most accounts the questions on the oral board weren't very difficult and most candidates walked away confident that they had done very well. So cue the surprise when the results were released a few weeks later and a few people failed to obtain a passing score of 70, and nobody else managed to score above a 72, barely a passing score. Though one candidate did actually manage to surpass the 72 threshold, yes one candidate somehow pulled off a perfect 100% on the oral board panel, an unheard of score, and even more shocking, the 28 point gap to the next closest candidate. This perfect score was able to elevate this candidate to the top of the Sergeant's eligibility list despite the fact that they had one of the lower scores on the written test by a fairly wide margin.

Now this seems a little shady, nothing like this has ever happened before in our Department. I have a lot of faith in the quality of our cops, but I find it hard to believe that someone is really 28% better than such a large number of experienced Officers. I also find it hard to believe that so many great cops could barely pass an interview that they all thought was relatively simple. Obviously eyebrows were raised, complaints were voiced, and explanations were asked for, this is where things went from kind of fishy, to flat out, unbridled dirty.

Cops here have questioned their test results before, recently even. All they ever had to do was contact the HR Director Santiago Malave and ask to see their test and interview results and scoring sheets, and his response was always to come on down to his office and he'd show them to you. That is, until this test. When some of the candidates contacted Mr. Malave's office about examining their results this time they were told that they had to wait 15 days from the posting date to view their results, though Personnel rules only give them 14 days to contest their results. So the question is how can you contest results that you're not allowed to see until the deadline for contesting them has passed!? When these candidates contacted Mr. Malave personally about seeing their results they were met a response telling them they would have to submit an FOI request for them, which seems odd given the past practice of transparency. Nonetheless, they submitted their FOI requests and awaited their results... which they never received.

Mr. Malave refused to release the test results to the candidates under a provision of Connecticut's FOI law that gives an exemption to releasing information that may reveal test questions. This is a ridiculous exemption to claim since the candidates requesting the information ALREADY KNOW THE TEST QUESTIONS! They were there in the interviews, they were asked the questions, claiming an exemption to protect your testing methods and secrets from the people who already know the information is reaching at best.

So what is Director Malave so desperate to hide that he is going to such great lengths to keep these test results secret? The stench from this case is wretched and threatens to destroy any faith in a process that is supposed to be fair and impartial. What's the point of participating in a process that is obviously crooked?

As such the Union has filed a grievance on this matter, we've also submitted requests for the test results, notes, and scoring sheets under FOI and MERA, which Mr. Malave has also denied. There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Malave is hiding something dirty, his behavior is completely out of line with the norms one would expect of someone in his position. He's using the Town's attorneys to help him keep the results secret which raises the question, why go through all this trouble and controversy instead of just producing the results and showing that everything was done legitimately? We do intend on getting down to the bottom of this and will let it play out to the end, however far it goes.

For now the list is frozen at least until the candidates work their appeals through the Personnel Board. All the Union is asking for is that the Oral Boards be re-done, with a new panel and new questions to give everyone the fair shot they should've had from the beginning.

We'll do our best to keep everyone up to speed with the latest on this subject.