Do Police Assessment Centres work?

To be fair to the police service, there is no foolproof way in the world today to guarantee that a person selected using any available criteria will be able to perform in the role required of them. The best an organisation can do is to utilise a method of selection that offers the highest chance of successful candidates being able to do the job. Assessment centres in general have been proved time and time again to provide the highest probability in a successful candidate being able to do the job. In general, assessment centres are presently the best way to assess a candidate’s potential.

Having said that, the police being the police have built several flaws into the assessment system which can impact very heavily on whether or not the right candidates are selected. The qualities required of a police officer are many and varied. The person who makes a good detective may make a terrible public order officer. A great traffic officer may be a terrible custody officer. That is one of the interesting things about the service. However, the new national system tests people in a comfortable (relatively speaking!) environment, where, for example, the people they meet in role-plays may be rude, but never obnoxious, verbally but never physically threatening, and the situations themselves have a huge dollop of “ideal” as opposed to “real” world about them.

Although it would be denied by the police service, the system totally fails to sufficiently test strength of character. Anyone can act “assertive” in a role play lasting five minutes, or challenge an inappropriate comment. Whether they can do so on the street outside a nightclub to an aggressive drunk at 3am is a different matter. Conversely, any trace of “political incorrectness” will result in an automatic fail. Whilst that is all well and good, sometimes in the real world of policing, you need people whose idea of political correctness is less important than their ability to act decisively in the face of danger. One of the best police officers I know is ex army and totally politically incorrect. He does not believe in force strategy, or the wider implications of issues such as sanction detections or corporate development (if you are not sure what they are, have a look at your local force’s website!). All he is interested in is arresting the bad guys. He is also extremely capable in defending himself in a physical encounter (or to put it the old fashioned way, he is a “hard man”!). This officer is the one that I as a supervisor and operational officer was always glad to turn to when either a prisoner became violent, or we were dealing with a nasty public order situation. By way of example, at one incident, the officer responded alone one night to an assault in progress on a pub car park. On arrival, he found two offenders hiding, who upon realising he was on his own, attempted to assault him. By the time other colleagues arrived to assist the officer, suffice to say he had already put both offenders on the floor, and they were begging him to let them surrender. Whilst I am not suggesting that every officer should be like this one (as that would be a supervisory nightmare!), some officers like him are needed in the police. The new system would never have allowed such a character to get in.

So, do assessment centres work? Maybe. Ultimately though, for you the candidate, it does not matter. They are a fact of life, and if you want to join the police, you need to accept their rules and play by them.

General Police stories · ·  no comments »