City tries to probe police biases
Before being hired, Columbus police recruits are subjected to batteries of tests designed to screen out those with problematic beliefs: psychological evaluations, personal-history questionnaires, background checks, polygraph tests and more.
But after an officer gets on the force, the Division of Police loses a great deal of leverage over officers, particularly in its ability to continue to screen for those issues, said Lara Baker-morrish, chief counsel for the Columbus city attorney’s office.
“You can’t just start an investigation against that individual without any cause to believe they have committed an infraction,” Baker-morrish said during a Columbus City Council committee meeting held Monday to discuss tightening the city’s methods for weeding out police officers who might be affiliated with hate groups or silently harbor the beliefs of those groups.
During the 3½-hour meeting, the council was given a tutorial on how Columbus police recruits are screened as job applicants, a task made less restrictive because the recruits have agreed to undergo testing for the purposes of potential employment and they are not yet covered by the police union contract, Baker-morrish said.
However, city officials appear poised to push the measures further while trying to balance an officer’s constitutional right to private affiliations and beliefs with the city’s need for public trust in their decisions.
Council will draft new legislation before the end of July that could give the city more power to investigate active officers’ ongoing affiliations and biases.
Councilwoman Shayla Favor, who chairs the criminal justice committee, emphasized that the council isn’t saying police are bad people.
“But at the same time, we cannot ignore the public outcry that is before us right now,” she said of protests in Columbus and nationwide over racial injustices by police and the deaths of Blacks such as George Floyd during police encounters.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist organizations, has identified 1,100 hate groups nationally, and there are likely more operating under the radar, said Judson L. Jeffries, professor of African American and African Studies at Ohio State University.
“History has shown that some groups operate in a clandestine manner,” Jeffries told the committee, noting that about 50 hate groups operate in Ohio.
The committee got an extensive review from the Division of Police, the Columbus Civil Service Commission and a psychology firm hired by the division to assess officer recruits, in how it screens for characteristics that might be problematic.
“We’re looking for stability,“said Dr. Jennifer Webb, a psychologist who does the screening, saying it looks at relationships, sex lives, social groups and what officers do in their free time.
”That gives us a more complete picture of who they are as a person, because as we know with law enforcement, their personal life affects their work, and their work affects their personal life,“Webb said.
During lengthy interviews, where recruits can become comfortable talking, interviewers are on the lookout for any racist views that a candidate might let slip out, Webb said.
One question recruits have to answer: “At any time in your life have you ever committed a hate crime?” They must respond either yes or no, said Richard S. Blunt II, manager of the background investigation section.
But the extensive system has limitations, such as “you may not consider yourself implicated with a certain group, but you still have those feelings,” Blunt said. “So I definitely think there’s work to do.”
The hate-group screening is part of legislative changes that Council President Shannon Hardin said the council intends to complete over the next several weeks. Others include include demilitarizing the police force, examining “no-knock” warrants and providing for independent investigations into police use of force, replacing the current internal departmental investigations.
The scrutiny is in response to what city officials overwhelmingly saw as over-aggressive Columbus police tactics during protests and riots that began Downtown May 28, three days after Floyd’s death. bbush@dispatch.com @Reporterbush