off all the amazing things he had done in his life. Unfortunately, he did not figure on one big thing; STRESS! Stress 
and nerves cause the most confident of us to freeze and stumble on our words. 
Therefore, the most poised of us must prepare a handwritten (or typed) pre-determined answer to many such 
questions, then create study cards (or notes in a smartphone) of the appropriate answer and finally study, study, and 
study more, and memorize! That way when the actual stress hits and the nerves take over, the immediate response 
will be to go back to what was studied. Don’t take my word for it. Look it up! It is actually a favorite tool and used 
by police officers regularly in their weapons and defensive tactics training as well. Can you think of a more stressful, 
nerve-racking situation, than having a person threaten or point a weapon at you? The way most officers begin to 
respond to such stressful situations is they revert unknowingly to their training. 
A second example of a female candidate on an oral board interview; a common question on the oral board panel 
has to do with knowledge of the department the candidate is testing for. As I read off the following question to 
the female candidate, her eyes opened as big as a flying saucer. “Who is the Police Chief of this department?” As 
the clock ticked away the seconds, her mouth continued to slowly open and eventually it completed the fish open 
mouth look. She, of course, did not know the answer. As the questions continued, it became apparent that she was 
going to fail as well, due to her lack of studying. My recommendation… if you want to work somewhere, you 
really should know a little bit about the department, especially who the top cop is! 
Assessment Center/B-Pad- LET Prep 
Assessment centers are not new to police department testing. However, they have generally been utilized 
for management promotional testing, when a police officer tests to be a sergeant or sergeant tests to be 
a lieutenant. With successful results in the previous arena and with the importance of hiring the best 
candidate, human resources and recruitment divisions have turned towards assessment centers and B-Pad 
Video Assessment, as an additional layer of testing in the LET Prep, to ensure hiring of the correct candidate. 
Assessment centers are practical testing situations, where the candidate must ‘act’ out their response. It is a 
time for the testing agency to see how the candidate might respond in different situations. One of the most 
common assessment center utilized at the entry police candidate level is the group assessment center. This 
group assessment center can look very different depending on the agency hosting the assessment, but the 
general framework is the same for all. For the group assessment center, eight-twelve candidates will enter the 
testing facility and sit around a table. The proctor will then give the candidates an ‘issue’ to solve. Example 
issue: “There have been a large number of bicycles stolen from the university in the last three months. 
What can we do to stop this?” There will be two-four evaluators at a table adjacent to where the candidates 
are sitting, and the evaluators watch and listen while the candidates try and solve the issue. It is impressive 
how quickly candidates lose their temper, become rude to other candidates, talk over candidates, or more 
positively, how candidates work with other candidates, compliment real ideas, and work quickly towards a 
viable solution. 
B-Pad Video Assessments are completed generally with one candidate at a time. A candidate enters a room 
alone, and a proctor shows the candidate a projector screen and a video camera. A video camera records the 
candidate. The proctor starts the video camera recording and leaves the room. Once the video starts playing, 
the candidate must respond towards the screen, and ‘act’ out whatever the candidate feels is the appropriate 
answer to the situation. One such example of the scenario played on the video was of a mentally challenged 
individual that was asking to return to Mars. The individual in the video had a knife. The candidate had 
ALISON S. BURKE, DAVID CARTER, BRIAN FEDOREK, TIFFANY MOREY, LORE RUTZ-BURRI, AND SHANELL
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