Police may extend screening tests to bar bigots

Published on 26/09/2006 00:52

SCREENING tests might be used to bar corrupt and bigoted police officers from promotion.

Senior officers yesterday said they will look to extend psychometric tests, which will be introduced to identify racist applicants from the spring, to other ethical concerns, in particular sectarianism, sexism and dishonesty.

The Scotsman revealed last year that psychometric racism tests had been ordered following the BBC's Secret Policeman documentary, which exposed racism within new recruits. A conference organised by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) yesterday heard that the tests will present potential recruits with 24 carefully-chosen policing scenarios.

They will be asked to say how they would respond and how sure they would be of their action on a scale of one to ten. The scenarios are interspersed with pictures, including some of white, black and Asian people.

Each recruit's answers are examined against the average response to detect unusual and undesirable attitudes.

The tests have been tried on about 600 recruits. Peter Thickett, secretary of the ACPOS personnel and training business area, said: "One of the biggest issues we face in the service is about integrity and ethics, and I think these tests will be useful to us both in terms of recruits but also potentially for selecting people for promotion and sensitive areas, for example, in CID."