Racially gerrymandering the content of police tests to satisfy the U.S. Justice Department: A case study.

Discrimination law and its aggressive enforcement by the U.S. Department of Justice both falsely assume that all racial-ethnic groups would pass job-related, unbiased employment tests at the same rate.Unreasonable law and enforcement create pressure for personnel psychologists to violate professional principles and lower the merit relatedness of tests in the service of race-based goals.This article illustrates such a case by describing how the content of a police entrance examination in Nassau County, New York, was stripped of crucial cognitive demands to change the racial composition of the applicants who seemed most qualified.The test was thereby rendered nearly worthless for actually making such determinations.The article concludes by examining the implications of the case for policing in Nassau County, Congressional oversight of Justice Department activities, and psychology's role in helping its members to avoid such coercion.