Recruits at the state police academy in Burien broke a rule when they shared study guides between classes, but the violations didn’t rise to the level of cheating or dishonesty, according to preliminary results of a Washington State Patrol investigation.
The result, which revealed sloppy test practices, relate to one class that was allowed to graduate Wednesday, with 25 of 30 recruits receiving a written reprimand that will be provided to their respective law-enforcement agencies to consider further action.
Of the five who were not cited, three were recruits of the King County Sheriff’s Office. The academy found the five would not have reasonably known they had prohibited material.
The investigation will be completed over the next two weeks and will look into recruits in a second class also implicated, the academy said in a statement released Wednesday by Executive Director Sue Rahr of the state criminal-justice training commission.
Rahr asked the State Patrol to look into allegations of cheating after a recruit at the Basic Law Enforcement Academy came forward three weeks ago and reported that recruits in two of three classes were sharing material from a computer thumb drive — a small, portable data-storage device — containing information from a study guide. The guide included test questions and answers for multiple exams, the academy said.
The State Patrol, which runs its own training academy, was asked to conduct the investigation to avoid any conflict of interest.
Bad training method
While the findings apply to one class, they also appear to cover the second class, Rahr said in an email.
The investigation made it clear the questions and answers were legitimately obtained by the recruits when training officers conducted “overly specific” review sessions in the days before tests were administered, according to the academy’s statement.
Training officers discussed actual test questions and answers, the statement said. Recruits took verbatim notes on their laptop computers and added material to class study guides that was electronically stored by various means, including thumb drives. These practices were “not a good training method” and have been stopped, the statement said.
Over time, the guides grew to include questions and answers to most written tests, according to the statement. Study guides appear to have been handed down from class to class in violation of academy rules, the statement said. The investigation found the overly specific reviews and compiling of questions and answers in study guides has been going on for years.
All written tests have been rewritten and a new final exam will be given to all recruits who had access to the compromised study guides, the academy said. The recruits must pass it to graduate.
All members of the class that graduated Wednesday passed the exam, according to the statement.
