Report Faults County, Police Psychologist : Screenings: An 18-month probe finds that public safety job-seekers aren’t being evaluated adequately or fairly.

Police psychologist Michael R. Mantell and San Diego County are not providing a “well-established and fully functional” program to screen applicants for high-stress jobs as sheriff’s deputies, marshals and probation officers, according to a hard-hitting report approved Wednesday by the county Civil Service Commission.

The report, the result of an 18-month investigation of Mantell and the county Department of Human Resources, also confirmed many complaints about how law enforcement applicants were treated in Mantell’s psychological program. The commission’s study found that many psychological interviews lasted only five minutes, and that Mantell often submitted “computerized” reports on job applicants rather than individually written evaluations of their suitability for police work.

The report recommended a series of specific actions to improve the screening program, but it stopped short of suggesting that Mantell’s contract with the county be canceled.

“There’s no authority for us to order something like that,” said chairwoman Deanna Spehn, noting that the report instead calls for tougher monitoring of Mantell’s work until his contract comes up for renewal next year.

“We’ve studied this thing back and forth and up and down, and the recommendations we are making are good ones,” she said. “There were problems, and now there’s a way to fix them.”

Her year-and-a-half investigation is the longest inquiry ever undertaken by the commission, she said, and her fellow members voted unanimously Wednesday to approve her findings and recommendations.

“We’ve been working on this a long time,” she said. “We want to make sure people are treated fairly and equitably here.”

Ethel Chastain, director of the county Department of Human Resources, which oversees the Mantell contract, reserved her thoughts on the commission’s findings. “I’m not going to comment today on something that thick,” she said Wednesday about the lengthy report. “I’ll have to read it first.”

Mantell could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

The commission’s report comes on the heels of Mantell losing his contract for similar services with the city of San Diego, where he has worked as a police psychologist for 10 years.

Earlier this month, the city manager recommended that the City Council skip over Mantell this year and award the contract to a team of four other psychological service providers. City officials cited no specific complaints and said their recommendation was not a rebuke of Mantell’s work with the San Diego Police Department, but rather an effort to see what other psychological groups could provide.

The county investigation released Wednesday found many problems in the way the Department of Human Resources administered Mantell’s contract.

“DHR does not have a well-established and fully functional pre-employment psychological program,” the report said. “The program lacks a well-managed, comprehensive monitoring system. Certain facets of the pre-employment psychological program have not been administered appropriately. It has been fraught with numerous inconsistencies.”

In addition, the commission found that the Department of Human Resources “did not research and develop a comprehensive” search for other psychological groups when it signed a new contract with Mantell earlier this year.

And the commission determined that monitoring of Mantell’s prior job contract, which ran from 1986 to this year, was “minimal at best and lax at worst.”

The county investigation began in October 1988, when Jack Arnold, a probation officer candidate, filed a complaint about Mantell’s psychological testing environment and interview.

“Most of Jack Arnold’s allegations are true in that the testing environment was less than optimum, and the interview was inadequate for his evaluation,” the report found.

The commission also learned that Arnold “was given a lengthy written examination in a busy reception area without the use of a table or desk, and he was interrupted during the written examination and was given a five-minute interview.”

With similar complaints also coming in, the commission decided to study the entire psychological pre-screening program and almost immediately found that supervisors in the Department of Human Resources were defensive about their supervision of Mantell’s contract.

“It is evident,” the report said, “that DHR took this reactive approach because it believed the program was functioning adequately, even though there had been numerous complaints.”

But, as the investigation progressed, the Department of Human Resources did make strides to tighten up its supervision of the contract. In January, the department asked Mantell to provide a more suitable testing environment, which he did, the report said. The department also asked him to conduct interviews for at least 30 minutes, which he said he was doing. However, the report found that complaints are still being lodged about the length of his interviews.

The commission also found that Mantell was submitting computer-generated reports on individual job applicants that were “virtually identical, word for word, except for gender references, for different candidates for peace officer positions.”

Since then, the commission said, Mantell has agreed not to use the computer reports.

But other problems continue, the commission said.

For instance, Mantell uses “low, medium and high” categories to rate applicants, which, the commission said, has caused some problems. “Lately,” the commission found, “the reports submitted by Dr. Mantell have indicated that certain candidates have behavioral problems which should be monitored. However, these same candidates are being passed.”

One applicant with a history of serious cocaine and LSD drug abuse was passed in his first psychological evaluation, the report said, as was another candidate whose psychological profile indicated that he was unsuitable for police work. In another instance, Mantell’s evaluations of two candidates were inadvertently switched, resulting in a candidate who should have failed being passed, and vice versa, the report said.

In its recommendations, the commission said the Department of Human resources should:

* Consult with outside agencies, such as the American Psychological Assn. and the Peace Officer Standards and Training organization, to see how the county’s program can be improved.

* Regularly meet with the sheriff, marshal and probation departments to ensure that applicants are being properly tested.

* Make periodic on-site visits to Mantell’s offices in Mission Valley.