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State police agree to pay $2.75 million to complete federal investigation into discriminatory hiring

Maryland State Police agreed to change the way it tests recruits, saying it will pay $2.75 million to 48 female and black applicants who were rejected for trooper jobs after failing on recruiting tests were later deemed to be discriminatory.

The actions, approved Wednesday by the Board of Public Works, are part of a consent decree that resolves a two-year civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the department's hiring and promotion practices.

The investigation found that police engaged in “a pattern or practice of unintentional discrimination against African-American and female applicants” for entry-level police officer jobs by using written and physical tests that disproportionately disqualified those applicants. The rejected recruits applied for police recruitment courses from 2017 to the present.

Col. Roland Butler, superintendent of the Maryland State Police, emphasized Wednesday that the Justice Department determined the discrimination was unintentional. But he also said the department agrees with the findings and that the agency is “committed to making meaningful and lasting change.”

“The fact remains that 48 men and women have been unjustly and inadvertently denied the opportunity to serve and protect communities,” Butler said during his testimony to the board. “However, discrimination in any form has no place in the Maryland State Police and will not be tolerated.”

The investigation focused on two tests that are part of the process of hiring a new soldier – including background checks, drug tests and interviews.

The police officer selection test is a written test of an applicant's skills in mathematics, reading, writing and grammar. A passing grade is 70%, and aspiring officers can retake the exam up to four times a year to pass. Applicants who fail are eliminated from the program.

The Functional Fitness Assessment Test requires applicants to do 18 push-ups per minute and 27 sit-ups per minute, run 1.5 miles in 15 minutes and 20 seconds, and reach 1.5 inches past their toes while seated to test their flexibility. To pass, all four parts of the test must be successfully completed. However, applicants can try three times a year before being eliminated.

The settlement caps a two-year civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. File Ppoto by Danielle E. Gaines

However, according to the Justice Department's investigation, the skills assessed in these two tests were not actually essential to a police officer's job performance. And while 91% of white applicants were ultimately able to pass the POST test, only 71% of black applicants did. 51% of women passed the physical test, compared to 81% of men.

“The Department of Justice determined that the MDSP (Maryland State Police) engaged in discriminatory hiring practices that unfairly disqualified black and female state trooper candidates,” said Sarah Marquardt, an assistant U.S. attorney involved in the case.

In addition to a cash payment, as part of the settlement, police will offer jobs with seniority dating back to the year they applied to at least 25 of the 48 Black and female applicants rejected since 2017. The agency will also develop new tests that do not discriminate under the supervision of the Justice Department.

Because the new tests will take time to develop, the Justice Department has agreed to allow police to continue using the two flawed tests, but with relaxed standards – for example, no time limit for running or push-ups. But that worried Treasurer Dereck Davis and Comptroller Brooke Lierman, who along with the governor make up the Board of Public Works.

“Why are we still doing this? …Why aren't they completely eliminated?” Davis asked about the tests. “If it’s not related to the job, it doesn’t have to be part of the process.”

Davis worried that by eliminating objective standards like physical test deadlines, results would be more subjective, which “could be more discriminatory.”

But Butler said it's important to keep testing with relaxed standards so police have a baseline for applicants and potentially help them focus on areas where they could improve.

Davis also was concerned Wednesday about a request from the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services for $70,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by an inmate who claimed correctional officers used excessive force during a strip search. Davis said he fears the state will settle down too quickly and therefore pay out millions.

“Why are we settling down?” asked Davis. “We seem to be looking at how much more we could pay (by going to court), and I'm thinking about how much more we could save.”

He estimated the board spent $10 million on settlements last year and wanted to know why the department wasn't taking more cases to trial.

“There just seems to be a certain reluctance to take a case to court. I'm just saying: Are we afraid of black jurors and black jurors, especially when they [inmates] “Are Black people?” Davis asked who is Black.

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.

Joseph Sedtal, the deputy administrative secretary of the Department of Public Security and Correctional Services, said the department was also unhappy with the payouts. But he said the decision to settle a case depends not on the race of a potential jury, but on the facts of the case and a recent trend overall of increasing verdicts in all trials.

“This is all a cost-benefit analysis,” Sedtal said. “Do we think a jury will return a verdict in the six to seven figure range, or does a $50,000 settlement make sense?”

He said the board only sees cases that have been resolved, not those the department is fighting.

“About 90-91% of these cases are ultimately dismissed,” Sedtal said.

The case, settled Wednesday, was frustrating for Davis because corrections officials said they believed the officer involved largely followed a 15-step protocol for a strip search. However, for privacy reasons, there is no video of the actual strip search, and Sedtal said that what actually happened in that short window of time was “our word against theirs.”

“And their word is more credible than yours,” Davis said. “That’s essentially what we’re saying.”

“I would view settlements as a rarity rather than a regularity,” said Davis, who worried that “the word is out” among inmates that the state will initiate a settlement.

Lierman asked Sedtal for data on the number of cases the department prosecuted and won versus the number of cases settled.

“Do you actually champion these, if so, what is your success rate?” she asked.

“If someone has been wronged, we should pay that person and the employee should be retrained or fired,” Lierman said. “But we cannot allow properly conducted strip searches to cost the state $50,000 each.”

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