Most police departments make recruits undergo psychological evaluation. Federal law enforcement agencies? Not so much.
Most big city police departments make officers undergo a psychological evaluation before getting a badge. Thousands of federal agents get no such evaluation.
It’s long been the norm for big city police departments to require potential officers to sit through psychological evaluations before they get badges and guns. But the thousands of agents assigned to the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies under the Justice Department don’t need psychological assessments to police American streets, documents obtained by NBC News reveal.
That means the federal agency tasked with forcing local police departments to reform their standards, including telling cities like Baltimore and New Orleans to have applicants sit through psychological evaluations, isn’t following its own instructions.
Former federal and local law enforcement officials say the discrepancy in hiring standards is a well-known source of tension between police chiefs and the Justice Department.
Justice Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 23, 2018.NewsBase / AP file“I think the average American believes that federal agents are the cream of the crop, they think DOJ sets the standards, but we don’t even polygraph or psych evaluate all our applicants,” said Jason Wojdylo, a recently retired chief inspector with the U.S. Marshals Service who is now a vice president with the Federal Managers Association, an employees association that advocates for law enforcement brass and other federal supervisors.
Wojdylo used a public records law to track down federal practices on pre-employment screening and uncovered the disparity between local police and their federal counterparts in psychological testing requirements. He shared the records with NBC News.
Rating: 5