I’ve never believed the officer with the highest test score should automatically get promoted. Some people are excellent test takers who have no business supervising other officers. They can memorize policy, give a polished interview, and answer every question on an oral board, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d trust them to run a shift, handle a difficult employee, or make a critical decision at two o’clock in the morning.

I want a promotional process that considers more than somebody’s ability to pass a test. But I also want the rules established before anybody knows who’s going to benefit from them. A written examination, oral board, scoring sheet, and eligibility list can all look perfectly legitimate on paper. If command can wait until the results come back and then decide some new factor suddenly outweighs everything else, I have to wonder what the testing accomplished in the first place.

If the written examination counts for 40 percent of the score and the oral board counts for another 30 percent, tell the candidates that beforehand. If experience, performance evaluations, education, disciplinary history, or time spent as an acting supervisor will be considered, establish how those factors fit into the decision. And if the chief has the authority to select anyone from the top three candidates, make that clear before the competition begins.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with giving command some discretion. I’ve seen officers who performed well on paper but lacked the judgment or temperament I would expect from a supervisor. A test can’t tell me everything about how somebody will handle responsibility for other people. But if I’m going to exercise judgment beyond the test results, the candidates should already understand where that discretion exists.

The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin discusses some of these considerations on improving the promotional process. Written testing can be useful, but departments also have to determine how they’re going to evaluate the other qualities the position requires. That makes sense to me. Decide what you’re looking for, establish how you’re going to evaluate it, and then let the candidates compete.

What I don’t agree with is changing the importance of those qualifications once the results are known. If something wasn’t significant enough to include in the process beforehand, I’m going to question why it suddenly became the deciding factor after the chief saw who finished first.

The competition can be influenced before it starts

The actual testing process isn’t the only place favoritism can enter the picture. Sometimes the advantage begins long before anybody announces a vacancy.

Officers notice who gets acting-supervisor assignments, who’s selected for certain schools, who’s included in management discussions, and who’s repeatedly encouraged to prepare for promotion. They also notice when somebody starts being treated like the next sergeant before there’s even a position available.

There can be perfectly legitimate reasons for those decisions. Some employees show more initiative, ask for additional responsibility, or demonstrate the judgment that makes leadership comfortable giving them opportunities. I wouldn’t assume favoritism just because one officer has received more development than another.

But I also can’t ignore how those decisions affect a later competition. If I’ve repeatedly assigned one officer to serve as acting supervisor and then decide that acting-supervisor experience is a major consideration for promotion, I should be able to explain how that person received those opportunities. Otherwise, I may have given somebody an advantage before the testing ever started, even though the formal process looks perfectly fair.

And sometimes departments go through the motions of holding a competition when the decision has already been made. If a position is an appointment and the law or applicable rules give the chief broad discretion to select whoever he believes is qualified, I’d rather acknowledge that. There may be good reasons for using that kind of selection process. But don’t make employees spend weeks studying, preparing for interviews, and competing against each other if the results aren’t actually going to influence the decision.

If I’ve already decided who I want, putting everybody through a meaningless competition doesn’t make my choice more legitimate. It just wastes their time and gives them a reason to question whether anything else coming out of command can be trusted.

When personal relationships start making the decisions

Favoritism isn’t always obvious, and it doesn’t necessarily involve somebody ordering a chief to promote a particular officer. Sometimes it’s a friendship, a family connection, or an employee who’s become particularly good at telling command what it wants to hear. In a small department, the chief may also know which candidate the mayor likes, who has friends on the council, and which promotion is likely to create the least political trouble.

Knowing those things doesn’t automatically mean a chief is corrupt or that political pressure is controlling the decision. But if relationships begin changing how qualifications are evaluated or how the rules are applied, the department has a problem.

Retaliation can be just as damaging, only in the opposite direction. An officer challenges a supervisor, files a complaint, testifies honestly during an investigation, or refuses to go along with something improper. Then a promotional opportunity comes along, and suddenly every old mistake or personality conflict becomes evidence that the officer isn’t ready.

Earlier in my career, I could usually tell when the next sergeant’s promotional exam was coming up because that’s when the write-ups would start. Eufaula had a policy that prohibited an officer from taking a promotional exam for two years after receiving a write-up, so even minor disciplinary actions could keep somebody out of the competition altogether.

I was written up for telling somebody I’d stopped them because their dog needed to be wearing a seatbelt. I was written up for not going into the police department to clock in while I was working an undercover assignment. I was written up for getting my throat cut while apprehending a drug suspect. All three happened years apart during promotional exam periods.

I understand that being eligible for promotion doesn’t give an officer immunity from discipline. If somebody violates policy, deal with it. But when the authority to discipline also becomes the authority to influence who gets promoted, I have to ask whether it’s being used to enforce standards or eliminate someone a supervisor sees as a threat.

I’ve also seen employees believe they’re being treated unfairly when the real problem is their own performance. An allegation of retaliation doesn’t automatically make it true. That’s why I look at whether the same conduct would receive the same disciplinary response if it involved somebody command actually wanted to promote. If the standard changes depending on who’s involved, the problem isn’t necessarily the written policy. It’s the people responsible for applying it.

I don’t believe every personnel detail needs to become department gossip, either. Some information about employees is confidential, and candidates aren’t automatically entitled to know everything considered about one another. But that doesn’t prevent a department from explaining the qualifications, scoring process, selection authority, eligibility requirements, and how errors can be challenged or corrected.

A candidate may be disappointed with the outcome, and that’s fine. Somebody has to finish second. I don’t expect every unsuccessful candidate to agree with the decision, but I should be able to explain how the process worked without inventing a new justification after the fact.

There’s also the effect on the person who actually gets promoted. I’ve seen employees convince themselves somebody was handpicked when that wasn’t true. A credible process protects the successful candidate from that kind of suspicion. They should be able to accept the promotion without everyone assuming they got it because of who they knew.

And the rest of the department is watching. One questionable promotion can affect how employees view the entire organization. If officers believe preparation, performance, and judgment determine advancement, those are the things they’re more likely to invest in. If they believe friendships and politics carry more weight, some will start concentrating on those relationships instead. Others may decide there’s no point in competing.

I’ve also questioned why some cities put candidates for sergeant through an elaborate promotional process while using a much less structured selection process for the police chief. That doesn’t necessarily make either method wrong, but it does raise questions about how we decide which positions require objective evaluation and which can depend almost entirely on someone’s judgment.

When I establish a promotional process, I want it to provide some separation between my personal preferences and the final decision. I may still have discretion, and I may still have to make a difficult choice between qualified candidates. But I should be able to defend that choice using the rules everybody understood before the competition started.

If I can change those rules after seeing the results, ignore the scoring whenever it becomes inconvenient, or invent another qualification to justify promoting the person I wanted all along, then I might as well admit the competition was never going to decide anything.