HEALEY EYES CHANGES TO PROMOTION PROCESS
Attorney says current testing flawed, discriminatory
Gov. Maura Healey and top House Democrats are backing an effort this year to rework the promotional exam process for noncommissioned officers, lieutenants, and captains in the state police as the agency faces multiple lawsuits alleging the procedure is discriminatory.
The rewrite of the rules, which were tucked away in both Healey and the House’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposals, would put in place a new “assessment component” for the promotion process that attempts to judge an officer’s real-world capabilities alongside the standard written multiplechoice exam.
The move comes as Springfield-based attorney Lisa Brodeur-McGan has been litigating a handful of lawsuits targeting the promotional process for state police captains and lieutenants, including the multiple-choice test officers have to take to climb in rank.
One expert in BrodeurMcGan’s case involving the captain’s promotion process found that the “state police’s continued use of multiple-choice has had … a discriminatory impact on minorities,” Brodeur-McGan told the Herald Friday.
“The whole goal is so that you have somebody more apt to do the job,” Brodeur-McGan said. “And if you’re testing it in a way that is weeding out minorities, then why are we doing it to begin with?”
The language offered up by the governor would allow state police brass to start evaluating a “comprehensive set of knowledge, skills, and abilities that have direct bearing on successful performance as a supervisor” that is otherwise difficult to determine through a written exam, according to state police spokesman Dave Procopio.
A third-party, independent vendor would administer the “assessment component,” which would focus on skills like situational judgment, interpersonal skills, and leadership attributes, Procopio said in a statement to the Herald.
State law only allows state police officials to consider a written exam with a “strict scoring rubric,” Procopio said, and the new process would allow the State Police colonel to promote candidates based on their written exam, assessment component, years of service, and other criteria like employment history.
“We believe the addition of the assessment process, which considers a candidate’s leadership traits, communication skills, and situational judgment, among other capabilities, is a better measure of a candidate’s suitability for promotion than a written test alone,” Procopio said in a statement to the Herald.
The proposal also creates a separate promotion process for captains, according to a spokesperson for the House’s budget writing committee.
For an officer to be promoted to captain, the person would need to pass a written test, an “assessment component,” or a combination of the two, and have at least two cumulative years of service as a lieutenant or detective lieutenant and 15 years as a uniformed member, the spokesperson said.
But not all are completely sold on the idea.
State Police Association of Massachusetts President Brian Williams said he is in support of providing additional flexibility to diversify the state police’s command structure but adding in an “assessment component” to the promotion process could have “unintended consequences.”
“Somebody in the future, whether it’s a colonel or somebody else in a high level within the state police, might be able to manipulate an assessment center to stack leadership positions with people who might not be as qualified based on some type of personal relationship or personal feelings,” Williams told the Herald.
The language, which was rolled out in Healey’s January budget submission and included in the version the House released this week, also comes years after the state settled a lawsuit filed in 2009 that challenged the state-administered multiple-choice test for municipal police officers.
The case, brought by attorney Harold Lichten and the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers, argued the municipal test disadvantaged minority testtakers in the late 2000s and early 2010s and led to lower scores, which in turn resulted in delayed or missed promotions.
A Suffolk County Superior judge ruled in 2022 that exam discriminated against Black and Latino police officers and the state ultimately reached a $40 million settlement with hundreds of minority cops in April 2023.
Lichten said the written and multiple-choice exams like the one the state police use “tend to have an incredible disparate impact on minority candidates,” and also “don’t seem to test for all the attributes necessary to be a state police superior officer.”
“So it looks like they’re just trying to make the changes necessary to avoid this problem in the future lest they be sued again like we sued the municipal police departments,” Lichten said of the proposal from Healey.
Brodeur-McGan said the “core problem” surrounding the municipal police exam in Lichten’s lawsuit is the same for the state police exam in her case against the promotion for captains.
“The court found having a multiple-choice exam that tested for A, B and C, that is not demonstrated to be linked to the job, and which is known to have an impact on minorities is illegal. Well, guess what? My captain case, same thing,” she said.
Williams said the promotional exams for lieutenants and captains included an oral component up until a 2020 police reform law nixed it, a move likely done “to make the process more objective” and remove any perceived favoritism “that comes with a subjective process.”
The multiple-choice exam is “the most objective testing that we have,” Williams said.