Poor Education, Drugs Reducing Deputy Recruits

A combination of poor reading and writing skills and widespread drug use among applicants is creating a shortage of recruits for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Sherman Block said Wednesday.

He said that 50% of the applicants failed the last written test for beginning deputies, a job that pays $26,400 a year.

“It is a sad commentary on education,” Block said.

He noted that of 2,035 applicants who passed both the written and physical examinations, 613, or 31%, were eliminated because of admitted drug use.

Block stressed that the problems of drug use and reading and writing skills are not peculiar to would-be law enforcement officers, but are encountered across the board in today’s society.

The sheriff said applicants are not required to have any special knowledge in order to pass the three-hour written examination, but the test does demand good reading and writing skills.

The Sheriff’s Department, the largest in the nation, has been authorized to hire 375 deputies during the 1986-87 fiscal year.

Despite the difficulties in recruiting, Block said, “We are not going to alter our standards.”

Block made the comments at one of his regular monthly meetings with members of the news media.

Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Cmdr. William Booth said that, according to the latest available data, based on an applicant examination in June, 1985, 72.1% passed the written portion. He said at that time applicants with two or more years of college were not required to take the written test.

Booth said that, after successfully completing several other phases of testing, 1,285 applicants permitted background checks to be made. Of that number, 928 passed and 357, or 35%, failed, most of them for admitted drug abuse.

‘Tolerance Level’

He said the city has a “tolerance level” that permits a limited amount of “experimentation” with certain drugs, but no one is accepted who admits any use of hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

“Finding qualified people is always difficult,” Booth said. “We’re competing with the Sheriff’s Department and other agencies with high standards, as well as with private industry.”

And like Block, Booth said the Police Department will not lower its standards.