The Oak Park Board of Fire and Police Commissioners is reviewing in its police sergeant testing process in order to increase the number of qualified candidates for promotion.
The last two Oak Park sergeant exams, administered to more than 60 applicants in total, produced only two sergeants. That rate is far lower than neighboring villages like River Forest and Forest Park.
On Wednesday, commissioners Mas Takiguchi, John Hedges and Chairman John Hedgeman were joined by Oak Park Police Chief Rick Tanksley, Village Manager Cara Pavlicek and her two assistants in addressing a number of issues related to hiring, promotion and termination procedures in both the police and fire departments.
Assistant Village Manager Lisa Shelley referred to “some of the frustration over the last promotion test at the sergeant’s level the commission had experienced.”
Those included a need to be able to ask more follow up questions to applicants and to produce a larger pool of eligible candidates.
Commissioners were particularly interested in how to balance asking equitably uniform questions to each candidate while asking appropriate follow-up questions based on a candidate’s answers.
Pavlicek said the firm conducting the interview sessions, Stanard and Associates, was likely attempting to keep the questions uniform from one interviewee to another to avoid bias.
Hedgeman was troubled that commissioners did not have set rules for the interview process, and so Stanard “was telling us what to do.” Hedgeman also was concerned the interview process didn’t give commissioners enough information.
Hedges said asking different questions to different people could “call the board’s impartiality into question,” but he added that the interview process “gave us enough information.”
Hedges allowed that many sergeant candidates “had a lot of experience and that experience didn’t always translate to the six or so questions we [asked].”
Pavlicek, who wants to be able to factor in questions by the chief during the candidate interview process, said she was not looking to re-invent the wheel.
“We want to make sure there’s a large number of applicants,” Pavlicek added. “The goal is to have a good list and a deep list.”
Tanksley told commissioners he believed “a little more work needs to be done on the front end in regards to preparing people to take the test.”
Pavlicek said Stanard and Associates’ contract expires this fall and that she intends to put out a request for qualifications to consider other firms.
Numerous patrol officers say they’re frustrated with both the low passing rate and the fact that, prior to 2013, the village hadn’t conducted a sergeant promotion exam in six years.
Officers haven’t criticized the results of the written and oral phases of the exam, but they are critical of the third-phase process, which involves sitting for an interview with commissioners. They see that as open to bias.
Earlier this year, 34 patrol officers applied to take the sergeant exam. Nine scored the requisite 70 percent on both the written and oral sections to qualify for an interview; only two qualified for promotion.
The 2013 sergeant exam produced only one eligible sergeant candidate. He was never promoted due to being on injured leave.
Low passing rates have not always been the case. In 2005, six of eight finalists passed the third phase of the Oak Park interview process and all eventually became sergeants.
River Forest had similar numbers of sergeant-eligible officers from their June 2012 testing. The exam results posted in June 2012 listed seven officers eligible for promotion, all of whom had scored 83 percent or higher.
Forest Park has conducted three tests for promotion to sergeant in the past 15 years, in 2000, 2006 and 2013. They skipped 2009 “due to no foreseeable openings.”
In 2000, all nine Forest Park officers scored the requisite 70 percent or higher. Six of those officers were eventually promoted to sergeant. In 2006, eight of 12 officers passed, and in 2013 six of eight officers passed.
