Fit for duty? Thousands of law enforcement officers weren't properly certified

Thousands of Houston-area peace officers report to work each day without proper certification that they are mentally fit for duty.

Nearly a year after Houston psychologist Carole Busick and her husband were indicted for allegedly not providing proper psychological evaluations to law enforcement applicants, only a fraction of the local officers certified with the substandard exams have been retested, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found.

The scandal revealed widespread problems with mental health screenings and left more than a dozen local law enforcement agencies scrambling to balance hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential retesting costs against the liability of keeping an unfit officer on the streets.

"If you threw a dart at a map of Harris County, you'd hit an agency Busick had performed evaluations for," said Gretchen Grigsby, a spokeswoman for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which investigated the psychologist's practices. "It was jaw-dropping,"

The Harris County Sheriff's Office - by far the largest agency affected by the screening snafu - has retested only 82 of the 1,860 current employees evaluated by the Busicks, giving top priority to civilian jailers who have applied to become sworn peace officers.

Many agencies have decided not to rescreen employees at all unless behavioral or job-related problems surface, despite recommendations from the state that all officers should be retested. And at least one peace officer screened by the Busicks already faces criminal charges and a civil lawsuit in an off-duty road-rage shooting.

The Busicks, both 67, deny wrongdoing and believe they have been treated poorly by state officials.

"They have not been dealt a fair hand by TCOLE," said Michael Hinton, their attorney.

Real 'evaluation'?

State investigative reports obtained by the Chronicle reveal that questions were raised several times over the years about the quality of the Busicks' work.

At least four similar complaints had been registered with TCOLE since about 2007, but investigators had gotten "limited response" from the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, according to the reports.

The latest investigation began with an anonymous tip from a would-be peace officer.

The job applicant said he went to the Busicks to gain the needed "L3" certificate saying he was fit for the job. He took the required psychological test, paid the $100 cash fee and walked out with a clean bill of mental health.

But the certification process seemed hurried and haphazard, without even a face-to-face interview with the psychologist who signed the paperwork. So the worried job applicant wrote a letter to the state agency.

"I'm not sure this was a real 'evaluation,' " the applicant said in a written complaint obtained by the Chronicle. "I wondered if my experience means there are some … deputies out there carrying weapons who had similar 'evaluations' as mine? If so, could there be some crazy deputies in Houston carrying weapons?"

Carole Busick had a long history of performing evaluations for law enforcement. She has been a licensed psychologist in Texas since 1984 and has no record of disciplinary actions or complaints in her file at the licensing board, investigators noted. Her husband, Don, is a licensed professional counselor and served as office manager.

Applicants were asked to fill out a standard personality test, known as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, along with written questionnaires and other tests.

Potential candidates are screened to weed out those who would not make good law enforcement officers.

"It's not a fine-grained psychoanalytic exploration of the officer's psyche; it's really just there to screen out gross psychopathology," said Dr. Laurence Miller, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based forensic and police psychologist. "It's to make sure you don't have officers who have severe mood disorders, who are psychotic, who might be cold-blooded psychopaths."

It appears to have been a lucrative business. The Busicks had exclusive contracts with some agencies, charging $100 to $125 for the screenings and up to $800 for more complicated evaluations. Records show the couple had collected nearly $190,000 since 2010 just from the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

But in 2014, after receiving the anonymous tip, TCOLE began investigating allegations that Busick performed evaluations without the face-to-face meetings that have been required by the state since at least 2012.

In August, a Harris County grand jury indicted Busick and her husband on charges of tampering with a governmental record. If convicted, the felony carries a penalty of up to 10 years in jail and $10,000 in fines.

Hinton, the couple's attorney, decried the charges as the "harsh" product of a grand jury that "had already made up its mind."

Busick would do face-to-face interviews immediately when asked by certain departments, he said. The first time she ever received a written notice that face-to-face screenings were required was when investigators arrived at her office with search warrant in hand.

"If they had received the guidelines, they would have started complying with them immediately," he said. "I think they felt they were adequately doing their job … and conducting adequate testing."

The couple frequently called TCOLE for guidance, Hinton said.

"They were always told, 'Use your best judgment,' " he said.

After TCOLE raided the office, Carole Busick immediately agreed to stop performing the police evaluations. The couple has now reached an agreement with prosecutors and is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday, Hinton said.

They have agreed to surrender their licenses and retire from practice.

"Dr. Busick wants to put this behind her," he said. "If that's her wish, as her lawyer, I'm going to abide by it."

Rescreening urged

State officials are now reviewing agency rules regarding psychological screenings and have urged law enforcement departments to rescreen all those evaluated by Busick.

A special panel is studying the process.

"At this point in time, we can't tell them 'you must do this,' and obviously there are some financial implications there," said Grigsby. "We have worked with them to the best we can. (But) there are some liability concerns down the line if (they) don't."

Some law enforcement experts said screenings of officers should not be shipped out to private contractors. Most large departments - including the Houston Police Department - handle psychological screenings in-house.

"Privatization always comes with risk. And that's just what this is an example of," said Charley Wilkison, executive director of Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, a statewide organization. "So (if) there's a public servant that's been duly tasked with this kind of really important work … their interest would be in the truth and serving the public and department that they're part of."

After being contacted by the Chronicle, the Harris County Attorney's Office said it is working with county law enforcement agencies to make sure all peace officers are rescreened.

"The general intention is to rescreen everyone - it's just going to take some time," said First Assistant County Attorney Robert Soard.

At the Harris County Sheriff's Office, about 300 of the 2,148 employees Busick evaluated no longer work there, but it is not known whether they moved on to other agencies.

"We're taking the situation seriously; it's not a passive thing whatsoever," sheriff's spokesman Ryan Sullivan said. "TCOLE's recommendation to rescreen and recertify every employee is a great recommendation. It's a hell of a lot more feasible for a small agency that might have been impacted. But we're an extremely large agency."

The financial burdens could be daunting for some cash-strapped agencies.

"The sheriff's office and taxpayer ends up - because of the failure of this private contractor - between a rock and a hard place," said Larry Karson, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Houston-Downtown.

Liability is also an over-arching concern. A Precinct 6 reserve deputy constable screened by Busick was charged in the 2014 shooting of a 20-year-old woman during what investigators said was an off-duty road-rage incident. Kenneth Caplan, who is no longer employed at the constable's office, is set to stand trial May 16.

A civil lawsuit against Caplan and Busick stemming from the shooting says a proper evaluation would have uncovered a questionable work history. Caplan held 21 jobs over five years and had been fired from 12 before going to work for Precinct 6, according to the suit.

"If Defendant Busick had conducted anything remotely resembling the required face-to-face interview and/or had performed anything remotely resembling an appropriate background interview, then … defendant Busick would have known that defendant Caplan likely failed to have the requisite psychological and emotional fitness/health to be a peace officer," the suit says.

Widespread problem

The dilemma facing local law enforcement is not unique to Harris County or Texas.

In August, officials in Maryland suspended its contract with a psychological testing company accused of cutting corners when evaluating future police officers.

The company was sued by relatives of an officer who killed herself, saying she had been cleared for duty before she was ready.

Karson, the UHD professor, cited a case in which a fire marshal who had been rejected by the Los Angeles Police Department went on to become one of the most high-profile arsonists in U.S. history.

In Texas, some law enforcement leaders believe the problem has been overblown.

"If the state is not making it mandatory that everyone should be rescreened … and people are adequately doing their job, then it's not an issue," said David Cuevas, president of the Harris County Deputies' Organization.

Other law enforcement leaders and experts, however, remain concerned about the impact on local communities. Even a small percentage of unfit officers pose a danger, they said.

"The problem is that with even 1 percent of those individuals who somehow were not identified and have some real problems," said psychologist Miller, " that's still lot of officers out there that can cause some trouble."