Commission adopts revised police sergeant promotional process with local written exam

The Civil Service Commission on Sept. 2 approved a revised police sergeant promotional process that reintroduces a locally customized written exam and splits scoring across three components.

Miss Faust and Chief Moore explained the new configuration: a written exam will account for 40% of the overall score, the oral interview 40%, and a leadership assessment 20%. Chief Moore said the department contracted a vendor to "review the documents listed there, our policy and procedure manual, state law, our collective bargaining agreement, and it's going to, engineer a customized test specific to our agency." He added that the previous single-vendor approach "really put all the eggs in 1 basket," and that the reconfigured process offers multiple dimensions to measure candidates.

Commissioners asked whether multi-component testing better predicts on-the-job performance; Chief Moore said the leadership assessment focuses on supervisory skills and that candidates promoted under earlier processes "are doing extremely well." The commission moved, seconded and approved the revised sergeant process by roll call.