| Because of the disciplinary problems faced by police and security departments, new laws and procedures encouraging police to be more accountable for abiding by and enforcing policies, practices, behaviors and decisions as well as to ensure and maintain continuous accountability for these actions have emerged. Psychological screening tools, such as the LEAI, assess potential officer candidates for psychological fitness for duty and have emerged as one of the most significant changes in police departments. The goal of the current study is to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the mean LEAI scores of police and security applicants and to compare the mean T-scores of these groups against relevant LEAI scales to further assess for statistically significant differences between groups and the behavioral admissions of ethic, safety, and criminal violations. Results from the Chi-Square indicate pass rate for police applicants was higher than that of security applicants with 62.7% of police obtaining passing scores, while only 57.5% of security personnel obtained passing scores. In the admissions of theft between the two groups there was a higher admission of drug use by security personnel (M = 24.32, SD 3.33) than that of police applicants (M = 25.21, SD 2.93). Differences in scores may be accounted for by the difference in the way candidates are trained and selected as further discussed in this study. With both populations, the LEAI was able to screen in those candidates who were more likely to be successful, long term, in their careers in law enforcement. |
