Psychologist Helps Police Screen Recruits : Consultant Keeps the Power Hungry, or Meek, Away From the Badge

Susan Saxe-Clifford knows there are a lot of people who want to be police officers for the wrong reasons. It’s her job to ferret them out before they are hired, trained and assigned a neighborhood beat and revolver.

A psychologist for more than three dozen police agencies in Southern California, including South Gate and Signal Hill in Southeast Los Angeles County, Saxe-Clifford conducts at least 50 evaluations a month to determine whether potential recruits are too power-hungry, or too meek, for police work.

“I hear everything,” she said. “Whether they’ve been physically abused. Whether they come from a family with drugs or divorce. I have to see whether the person has worked through these kinds of problems, thought about them and is stable.”

After 16 years of experience testing police applicants, Saxe-Clifford rattles off a litany of what she considers apocryphal motives for wanting to become an officer.

“I’ve always wanted to be in a shoot-out,” she said one man answered.

‘Straighten Out My Life’

She said another, older candidate told her: “I’ve never been able to hold onto a job; I’m going into police work to see if it will help me straighten out my life.”

Thrill seekers don’t make it past Saxe-Clifford, she said. Neither do the ones claiming they intend to discipline their lives with a career in law enforcement.

And if you don’t make it past Susan Saxe-Clifford, you’re out of luck.

“I provide a professional outside opinion that helps assure only the best applicants become officers,” Saxe-Clifford, 39, of Encino, said in an interview. Of those who are screened out, she said, “It would be very unpleasant to have them out in our community, armed.”

In order to determine whether an individual has what it takes, she said she first explores what compels candidates to seek a police career. This path often leads to other revelations which help her reach a conclusion about a recruit.

While she maintains she does not hold official veto power over who becomes a recruit and who doesn’t, she said that none of the agencies employing her services has ever rejected her recommendation.

“If she says they are not suited, we don’t hire them,” said South Gate Police Capt. Ron George. “It’s part of the total hiring process.”

Although state law did not make psychological screening mandatory until 1984, South Gate has been using a police psychologist to screen applicants for the past 20 years. Saxe-Clifford was hired by the department in 1981.

“Some agencies look at it (psychological testing) as a requirement and others see it as an important tool,” George said. “It is our position to pay close attention to what the psychologist has to say.”

Psychological testing is relatively new to many police agencies; the practice proliferated during the late 1970s. Some agencies, Saxe-Clifford said, resisted the program until a state law made it mandatory.

But a few agencies have been “very open to psychological screening,” she said.

Among the agencies she cited is Signal Hill, which hired her shortly after college football player Ron Settles was found hanged in his Signal Hill jail cell in 1981.

The exact cause of Settles’ death remains a mystery and the controversy surrounding the department, which along with the city of Signal Hill, was named in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the Settles family, prompted the department to hire Saxe-Clifford.

Signal Hill Police Chief Michael McCreary was screened by Saxe-Clifford when he joined the department as chief in 1982 and later asked her to start a department counseling program that was implemented that year.

“I came a year after the Settles incident, but morale was still pretty low then,” McCreary said. “The officers felt they had been mistreated by the media and that the public had treated them badly. It just wasn’t a pleasant place to work.”

Saxe-Clifford’s counseling program was the first step toward getting the department back on its feet, McCreary said.

“Signal Hill gives their counseling program carte blanche,” Saxe-Clifford said. “They really go way out to provide their employees with the counseling services they need.”

Although Signal Hill was receptive to psychological screening, Saxe-Clifford says certain agencies “may not have trusted outside consultants and didn’t know whether they would add to the system. Psychologists may have been seen as an intrusion because departments might lose candidates they’ve carefully recruited,” she said.

While South Gate’s George acknowledged that a few unqualified candidates may have slipped past psychologists, he says he supports the screening process.

“You have to understand this is not an exact science,” George said. “The one way to measure the success of the screening is to measure the success of each candidate and in that respect it has been successful.”

Saxe-Clifford said about 20% of the potential recruits who see her “are wrong for police work.” This rejection rate, she added, is low compared to that of other police psychologists in Southern California, who often turn away 60% of the applicants.

“The process I’m involved in should be to screen out those inappropriate, not to choose the best ones,” she said. “The state of the art is not advanced enough to make such specific judgments. If there’s a subjective part of the process, it should be done, not by the psychologist, but by the police oral board.”

Saxe-Clifford began her forensic psychology career with the Los Angeles Police Department in 1970. She set up her own practice, based in Sherman Oaks, in 1978 after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California.

In addition to evaluating recruits, Saxe-Clifford often tests veteran officers who show signs of stress, which may be detected, for instance, by the number of complaints filed by citizens accusing them of using excessive force.

Interview Only One Tool

George said that while South Gate police take Saxe-Clifford’s recommendations seriously, psychological screening is only one of many tools used to evaluate recruits. Others usually include a background investigation, a written scholastic test, a polygraph test, two extensive interviews with police authorities and a medical examination.

“We do an initial interview and then we do a background check on the applicant, and on certain occasions we use a polygraph,” George said. “Then we send them to get a medical exam and then a psychological exam. If they pass the psychological exam, then they go on to Police Academy.”

“Emotional maturity is what we’re looking for,” Saxe-Clifford said. “You are giving somebody not only the right to shoot somebody, but the responsibility that they must, in certain situations.”

Other officials contacted by The Times praised Saxe-Clifford and other police psychologists for saving tax dollars by sifting out applicants who would probably drop out before completing an expensive, multiweek training program.

Take Written Test

All applicants also take a written psychological test before an hour-long conversation with Saxe-Clifford. She said she never rejects an applicant based solely on a written test, because often there are sound explanations to answers which initially may appear eccentric.

For example, one applicant’s written examination indicated he suffered from paranoia. It turned out he was a prison guard, and an answer that “people I deal with often talk about me behind my back” suddenly seemed normal.

In addition to determining the applicants’ motivation for becoming an officer, Saxe-Clifford tries to uncover other clues which suggest unsuitable traits for a police officer.

Applicants she recommends against hiring often are also either too aggressive or too mild-mannered, she said.

“You look at how they’ve lived their life to that point,” she said. “You look at their responses to some hypothetical questions. Have they been in a recent fight? Could it have been avoided, and did they precipitate it?”

She cited two other qualities which are sometimes difficult to find in the same person:

“A police officer is an executive who must make high-level decisions which will stand. But the officer also works in a semi-militaristic organization with a chain of command. So the officer must have the unique ability to function totally independently at times but also follow orders. Those are two opposite qualities.”

Ability to Communicate

She also looks for people with an ability to communicate and a healthy self-esteem.

Those who can’t articulate their thoughts are more likely to express themselves forcefully, she said. People possessing low self-esteem, she added, may want the badge to make them feel powerful.

“If they are looking for this badge to give them self-esteem, there’s going to be big trouble,” she said. “They might come across as overly macho or abuse their authority. They might not be flexible.”

She added she is also leery of applicants who reveal racial prejudices, or prejudices against women or homosexuals.

“We all have some prejudices; the question is, will the prejudice interfere with the way they treat people on the job?” she said.

Many Reveal Prejudices

Many interviewees reveal strong prejudices to her without even knowing it, she said, because “they think everyone thinks that way.”

“Some think everyone hates Mexicans, or that everyone knows women should stick to scrubbing floors,” she said. “They reveal themselves in subtle ways, but it certainly affects their chances for a good recommendation.”

In Saxe-Clifford’s experience, no patterns have developed to show that any sex or age group is better suited to become a police officer than any other one, she said.

“When you need so many peace officers, you really do want to bring them in from all kinds of walks of life and give them an opportunity they may not have been aware of,” she said. “They may not be aware of what is required, but if they don’t apply, they won’t know they may be just the one a police agency is looking for.”

-Times staff writer Rita Pyrillis contributed to this report.