The quest for competitive and effective police officers led to the introduction of some measures to help in the recruitment of individuals. The measures involved use of psychological tests in police departments. Although most police departments tend to have enhanced usage of the psychological measures in employing police officers, majority of the departments experienced some challenges while conducting their selection processes. For instance, due to lack of knowledge on what to look for while screening police officers during their recruitment, most of the police departments ended up doing away with some essential measurements such as, emotional stability and personality measures.
In addition, the states police agencies when compared to municipal and other local law enacting departments, proved to be so slow in adopting the psychological policies in inoculating new officers. For instance, some of the police departments used drug tests in screening police candidates instead of taking required checks on the ability and disabilities of individuals.
Despite the much input showed by municipal police department, it also proved incompetent in implementing the psychological process of recruiting police officers. Just like other police departments, it also disregarded some of the psychological measures in screening police candidates.
Forensic professional officers had to be included in the solving the problems encountered in police departments in the selection of police officers. This is because apart from the forensic officers conducting mental tests of individuals, their communications with the police candidates result to fair recruitments, and for this reason, solving the issue of discrimination among individuals involved in the selection.
Despite the efforts imposed by the Americans Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) in eradicating of discrimination against individuals with physical, mental or sensory disabilities in their daily chores, it proves futile when it comes to recruitment of police officers. This is because the police role entails much use of physical, mental and sensory fitness in meeting the demands of the state. Deploying of individuals with disabilities to the field of law enforcement will be like inoculating punishment to innocent and disabled individuals; this is because they will have hard times in running their law enforcement roles in their daily activities.
In addition, majority of the unlawful abiding citizens will take advantage of their disabilities and indulge in more wrongs hence leading to blame game to the less advantaged disable individuals by the state and the citizens. On the other hand, individuals with disabilities will feel inferior in the field of law enforcement due to the difficult responsibilities entailed. Therefore, it is indispensable to have disable individuals employed in the fields that are not too much involving.
Reference
American Psychological Association: The Americans with Disabilities Act and How It Affects Psychologists. (2011). Web.