No Amount of Testing Can Screen Out Unstable Officers

Prospective police officers routinely go through a battery of tests that check on psychological tendencies, financial stability, marital status, past brushes with the law, even how they get along with their neighbors.

But police experts say that no amount of testing can predict whether an officer will turn to a life of crime.

“You still might not know who you are getting,” said Fullerton forensic psychiatrist Bruce Danto, who counsels officers from the Los Angeles Police Department.

“You can talk to everyone you want to, but they may not really know the person because how they appear to others may not be a reliable measure of what they’re really like. Being the fastest man on track or having the highest shooting scores doesn’t tell you how the person acts when the heat’s on.”

This week, Kevin D. Arnold, a former Fountain Valley police officer and suspected bank robber who was fatally wounded by an FBI agent, joins what experts say is a tiny minority of cops who turn criminal.

Earlier this year, a former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff was charged with murdering a supermarket manager in Yorba Linda during a string of armed robberies in Orange County. A San Clemente police officer was convicted three years ago of raping another officer.

A California Highway Patrol officer was convicted of strangling a San Diego college student after a traffic stop on a dark freeway off-ramp in 1986. At his trial, many young women testified that he had stopped them in the same area for minor infractions.

And during one terror-filled summer in 1991, a San Diego police officer on beach patrol raped, robbed, or shot more than a dozen beach-goers before he was caught and sentenced to 56 years in state prison.

The number of cops arrested for felony crimes is small, estimated at less than 1% of the more than 70,000 California law enforcement officers, according to the California Peace Officers Assn. Yet each incident raises questions about the people who are hired to protect, then later use their expertise to act like social predators. Many experts agree that police are no more prone to crime than are other citizens, but many point to the special stresses and challenges that officers face as factors that can contribute to a cop’s fall from grace.

Police officers wield an exceptional amount of power, including the power to deprive someone of liberty and life, Danto said. They also are constantly exposed to temptations.

“It takes a really mature, controlled person who can achieve the necessary judgment to make those decisions,” Danto said. “It takes a very disciplined person to ensure that all those drugs, guns and money stay in the evidence locker and are not taken for personal use. Most cops are, but some aren’t.”

The violence that officers regularly deal with can also lead them to feel distrustful and even hostile toward their communities.

“They start seeing so much crime, they don’t believe anyone is honest. The next logical question is, ‘Why should I be?’ ” Danto said.

Tustin Police Chief W. Douglas Franks said it is critical that law enforcement agencies keep close tabs on officers and aggressively push psychological counseling or more in-depth therapy when there are signs of trouble.

“You need to look for obvious stress, observable stress,” said Franks, chairman of the training advisory board at Golden West College’s Law Enforcement Academy. “An increase in temper. An increase in complaints about force being used in the field. Personal upheaval like a divorce, the death of a child.”

When an officer is arrested for a crime, the impact on a community and its police department can be devastating.

“It’s a major slap in the face when they do it on the job,” said Oakland Police Officers Assn. Vice President Luis Silva, who said it makes the job all the more difficult for good officers.

“It brings morale down,” Silva said. “We’re striving to make a connection with the population, to be accepted and respected, and then one of our own does something that knocks us back so far we almost have to start over again.”

Skip Murphy, president of the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, said stress is so prevalent in police work that officers must find ways to release it.

“Some people quit, and go build widgets,” he said. “Some other people dive into the bottle, get hooked on drugs--and some get hooked up into the crime life. . . .

“The important thing to remember is, the percentage of law enforcement officers that end up moving to the criminal side is extremely small.”