Arapahoe sheriff’s office facing federal hiring probe over use of company to screen applicants

The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office is under federal scrutiny for its use of psychological screening services that a Colorado lawyer argues violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And Arapahoe could be just the first of many agencies to face scrutiny of their hiring practices.

Law enforcement agencies that range in size from Denver Police to Firestone pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to rely on an Illinois-based company that uses opaque methods to probe job applicants through the use of hundreds of questions — including whether the applicants have ever been victims of sexual harassment or whether they’ve ever filed formal complaints against previous employers, according to court documents.

The company, called Psychological Dimensions, has doctors that make recommendations to law enforcement agencies on the suitability of various applicants for the jobs they want.

The screenings aren’t just for sworn law enforcement officer hires, but also for civilian jobs — like public information officers.

The attention on the company stems from an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation that began with a 2020 incident in which a woman was offered a civilian public information role at the Arapahoe Sheriff’s Office.

She had passed all of the pre-hire screenings and job interviews. Then, after agreeing on a contingent offer, submitted to another round of questions, in which she acknowledged to a Psychological Dimensions doctor that, six years prior, she had anxiety and post-traumatic stress issues stemming from a childhood incident.

Arapahoe County rescinded her job offer.

In court documents, the county attorney said the decision to revoke her offer of employment was based on the recommendation resulting from the woman’s “lack of candor and duplicitous behavior.”

“The offer was rescinded because she repeatedly provided contradicting information about her medical history during the post-offer medical/psychological examination and demonstrated questionable judgment by overly downplaying significant past psychological issues,” said Assistant County Attorney Daniel Perkins, in court documents.

Perkins then went on to say that there is no evidence that the woman’s “conditional offer of employment was rescinded because of her purported disability.”

Arapahoe County and the Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the EEOC investigation beyond the statements in court documents because it remains active.

Psychological Dimensions said the woman’s “self report” raised serious concerns about her ability to communicate information consistently, clearly and reliably, which is a core job-relevant dimension of the public information job, according to court documents.

The woman “was determined to be unsuitable for the position at that time.” Then, they added, “any medical or psychological conditions she may or may not have had were simply not part of that equation.”

It’s an explanation the woman’s lawyer doesn’t buy.

“That’s just plain discrimination,” said Iris Halpern, the woman’s attorney representing her in front of the EEOC. “After extending a job offer, a company can do a fit-for-duty examination, but you can’t use that information to then discriminate against someone.”

Arapahoe County’s pre-screening questions for applicants is still under investigation by the EEOC, said Mary Jo O’Neill, a regional attorney for the EEOC’s Phoenix District Office, which is handling the investigation.

“Federal law gives the EEOC authority to obtain information necessary to determine whether an employer’s hiring practices comply with antidiscrimination statutes,” O’Neill said, in an email.

The EEOC recently lost a subpoena enforcement action in Colorado district court, which would have forced Psychological Dimensions to hand over a large swath of applicants’ answers to pre-screening questions and their evaluations of those answers.

O’Neill said they are mulling an appeal to that and they are continuing to investigate the hiring practices.

But Halpern is worried about the potentially thousands of people who were subjected to pre-medical screenings and other inappropriate questions that discriminated against them before they even were considered for jobs at police departments.

That’s a flagrant law violation, she said.

“You can’t just ask someone about their life,” Halpern said. “You have to ask them whether they can perform the essential job functions … Are these questions geared towards that? Not really.”

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