Thesis:
This thought piece examines how the New York City Police Department has systematically circumvented New York State licensing laws to employ unlicensed individuals as âpsychologists,â conducting fitness evaluations that directly impact the careers and civil rights of thousands. Drawing on Education Law §§ 7605, 6512, and 6513, as well as federal mandates like the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP), this essay reveals a pattern of legal evasion, institutional retaliation, and historical misuse of psychological screening as a tool of social control. Through the case study of Marquis Anderson and parallels to the NYPDâs misuse of sealed records, it exposes how the Departmentâs actions not only violate the law but inflict lasting psychological harm, disproportionately affect protected-class applicants, and erode public trust. Ultimately, this analysis calls for urgent interventionâlegal, political, and institutionalâto restore legitimacy, enforce compliance, and safeguard the rights of those subjected to unlawful evaluation practices.
I. Introduction
For decades, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has presented itself as the gold standard of law enforcement: a vast institution responsible for public safety in one of the most complex urban environments in the world. But beneath the surface of its vaunted reputation lies a systemic practice that not only violates state law but also erodes the civil rights of thousands of individuals each yearâmany of whom never even become officers.
At the heart of this problem is the NYPDâs ongoing use of unlicensed and unpermitted individuals to perform psychological evaluations of police applicants and officers. As exposed in a recent investigation by , the department has for years assigned individuals without valid licenses or limited permits to conduct psychological assessments that are, by statute and professional ethics, reserved for credentialed psychologists. These assessments are not minor procedural steps. They are career-defining gatekeeping mechanisms that determine who gains entry into law enforcement and who is labeled mentally âunfitââoften permanently.
The departmentâs defense of this practice rests on an alleged exemption to New York State Education Law, specifically §âŻ7605. But a close reading of the statuteâand its legislative historyâmakes clear that no such exemption exists for the NYPDâs use of unlicensed personnel in this context. Indeed, Education Law §§âŻ6512 and 6513 make it a felony to practice psychology without a license or valid permit, and a separate offense to misuse the protected title of âpsychologist.â These are not technical violations. They are crimes.
Worse still, this practice appears to have persisted across multiple administrations and under the supervision of the NYPDâs Legal Bureau, raising serious questions about institutional accountability, criminal liability, and willful misconduct. Records show that as many as 55 out of 74 evaluators in the departmentâs psychological assessment units lacked licensure or permits. Some worked uncredentialed for over six years. These unqualified evaluations were used to disqualify thousands of candidates, many of whom were disproportionately from protected classesâincluding Black and Latino applicants, immigrants, and womenâraising urgent concerns under the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the New York State Human Rights Law (NYSHRL), and the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL).
This isn’t just a matter of internal policy failure or bureaucratic negligence. It is a direct violation of statutory mandates designed to protect the public, preserve professional standards, and ensure fairness in government employment. And if the past is any guide, the NYPD is unlikely to abandon its legally dubious position voluntarily. This is the same department that, in R.C., A.G., J.J. v. City of New York & James OâNeill, was found to have unlawfully accessed sealed arrest records in defiance of clear statutory prohibitions under Criminal Procedure Law §§ 160.50 and 160.55. In that case, the court issued a sweeping injunction, ordering retraining and institutional reform. We anticipate a similar legal reckoning here.
In this long-form thought piece, we will examine the full scope of the NYPDâs statutory overreach, beginning with the historical roots of psychological screening in law enforcement and culminating in a detailed legal analysis of the relevant provisions of New York State Education Law. We will show how the departmentâs current practices violate not only state licensing statutes but also federal civil rights law, including the UGESP framework that governs fair hiring and selection procedures.
We will also explore how the psychological screening regime, far from being a neutral tool for identifying suitable officers, has been weaponized as an instrument of structural discriminationâone that filters out candidates not based on mental unfitness, but on arbitrary, biased, or unvalidated metrics. And we will call for immediate action: criminal prosecution where warranted, administrative oversight, statutory enforcement, and the restoration of due process for thousands of candidates harmed by these unlawful evaluations.
This issue is not just about individual misconduct or flawed HR practices. It is about the systemic collapse of regulatory compliance in one of the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the nationâand the corrosive effect this has on public trust, constitutional rights, and the rule of law.
II. A Brief History of Psychological Screening in Law Enforcement
The use of psychological screening in American law enforcement emerged in the post-World War II era, rooted in a growing recognition of the mental and emotional demands placed on officers. As urban policing intensified in complexity and scrutiny, agencies began to implement psychological evaluations as a means of identifying candidates capable of managing stress, exercising discretion under pressure, and maintaining stable behavior in high-stakes situations. What began as a tool for internal quality control soon evolved into a mandatory pre-employment checkpoint, ultimately becoming codified in federal guidance and state law.
By the 1970s, with the rise of employment discrimination litigation and the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the need for validated, nondiscriminatory screening tools became more urgent. The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (), adopted in 1978 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, and the Civil Service Commission, established a legal framework requiring employersâincluding public entitiesâto ensure that selection instruments such as psychological evaluations be job-related and consistent with business necessity. These guidelines prohibited the use of arbitrary or subjective criteria that might result in disparate impact against protected classes without a demonstrable link to essential job functions.
In New York, psychological screening of police officers became standard practice during this same period. Initially unregulated and inconsistently applied, the process was formalized over time through a combination of civil service rules, administrative codes, and statutory enactmentsâmost notably the inclusion of licensure requirements under the New York State Education Law. Article 153 of the Education Law (specifically §§ through 7610) governs the profession of psychology, establishing that only individuals with a valid license or a limited permit may lawfully practice or hold themselves out as psychologists. Section provides limited, tightly defined exemptions, such as for school psychologists working in state-approved settings or supervised doctoral candidates identified as interns or psychological assistants.
The rationale for licensure is foundational: to protect the public from unqualified practitioners in fields that directly affect health, safety, and legal standing. In the case of law enforcement, psychological assessments carry extraordinary weightânot only in determining whether a candidate may serve, but in labeling individuals as âunfitâ in ways that may permanently stigmatize them or bar them from future public employment.
This evolution from discretionary practice to regulated professional standard was not accidental. It was shaped by decades of litigation, professional advocacy, and statutory reform aimed at safeguarding both the integrity of the profession and the rights of the individuals being assessed.
Despite this, the NYPD has developed a parallel systemâone that for decades has operated in the shadows of legal compliance. Psychological screenings, both for recruits and active officers, have been conducted by individuals without valid licenses or permits, often for extended periods, with little to no oversight. In many cases, these individuals were not merely doctoral students accumulating clinical hours under close supervision, as permitted by law. Instead, they were treatedâand presentedâas fully credentialed evaluators, wielding the authority to disqualify candidates, mandate medical leave, or recommend terminations.
The institutional justification for this practice has shifted over time. At various points, the department has claimed internal exemptions based on civil service regulations, budgetary constraints, or vague interpretations of Education Law § 7605. None of these rationales holds up under legal scrutiny, nor do they reflect the stringent requirements set forth by state licensing authorities or the Municipal Police Training Council () guidelines, which call for the exclusive use of licensed psychologists in police candidate assessments.
The issue, then, is not merely that the NYPD failed to comply with evolving legal standards. It is that the department has actively resisted them, constructing a bureaucratic ecosystem where credentialing, accountability, and professional regulation are treated as optional. In doing so, it has not only undermined the legitimacy of its psychological screening process but also exposed itselfâand the City of New Yorkâto massive civil and criminal liability.
While the text of Education Law §§ 7605, 6512, and 6513 provides a clear statutory framework that prohibits the NYPDâs use of unlicensed and unpermitted individuals to conduct psychological evaluations, the deeper issue extends far beyond legal noncompliance. These violations are not simply the result of administrative oversightâthey are the product of a system that has long wielded psychological screening as a tool of institutional gatekeeping. To understand how such a legally indefensible practice could persist for decades within one of the nationâs most powerful law enforcement agencies, we must look beyond the letter of the law and examine the cultural, historical, and political logic that shaped the very concept of âpsychological fitness.â
That journey begins with an uncomfortable truth: psychological screening in American policing was never solely about public safety or scientific rigor. It wasâand remainsâa mechanism of social control.
III. Origins and Intent: Fitness as a Tool of Social Control
The psychological âfitnessâ doctrine in policing did not emerge from a neutral space of scientific progress or benevolence. It was not born from a public health mandate to protect the integrity of law enforcement or safeguard communities from instability. Instead, it arose as part of a broader state imperative: to preserve institutional order, uphold dominant cultural hierarchies, and manufacture internal cohesionâoften at the expense of diversity, dissent, and democratic accountability. In this light, psychological screening was never just a mechanism for evaluating suitability. It was a discretionary filter designed to entrench conformity and control.
Historically, policing in the United States has been inextricably tied to the maintenance of social order along lines of race, gender, class, and political alignment. From slave patrols to postbellum municipal police departments, the mandate was never merely to enforce law, but to manage populations deemed dangerous to the prevailing order. As public scrutiny of police violence and misconduct grew in the 20th centuryâparticularly during and after World War IIâdepartments sought new ways to project professionalism and legitimacy. One of those ways was through the veneer of science: the use of psychological assessments to vet candidates and monitor personnel.
But the science itself was neither ideologically neutral nor apolitical. The psychological models embraced by police agencies throughout the mid-20th century were deeply influenced by military techniques developed during wartime. These methods were explicitly designed to measure obedience, resilience under command, and susceptibility to group cohesionânot independent thought, ethical judgment, or civic orientation. When adapted to civilian law enforcement, these screening tools were not recalibrated for equity or inclusion. Instead, they were weaponized to exclude individuals who deviated from a narrow vision of the ideal officer: white, male, emotionally contained, politically docile, and loyal to the chain of command.
In the postwar decades, especially amid Cold War paranoia, psychological evaluation became a subtle but powerful tool for gatekeeping. Law enforcement agencies, including the NYPD, used these assessments not to protect the public from instability but to protect the institution from perceived internal threats. These threats included Black candidates who challenged segregated hiring systems, women deemed emotionally unsuitable for the rigors of the job, working-class applicants affiliated with labor unions, and politically engaged individuals critical of the status quo. Psychological disqualification provided a legally palatable justification to reject these candidates without ever naming race, ideology, or class as the basis.
By invoking notions such as âemotional maturity,â âinterpersonal functioning,â or âresilience,â departments could eliminate applicants who were simply different, without transparency, accountability, or recourse. This allowed the psychological fitness test to function as a highly discretionary barrier cloaked in the appearance of objectivity. And because these evaluations were rarely subject to independent audit, legal review, or uniform standards, their potential for misuse was virtually unchecked.
Even in contemporary practice, the NYPDâs psychological evaluation protocols retain this discretionary core. The referral system lacks meaningful due process protections. The criteria for evaluation are often unpublished, vague, or circular. Those conducting the assessmentsâmany of whom, as discussed, lack proper licensureâhold immense power to shape or end careers with little to no oversight. And perhaps most concerning, the evaluative lens continues to pathologize dissent. Officers or applicants need not engage in misconduct to be flagged for psychological review; they need only challenge power. File an EEOC complaint. Report discrimination. Question orders. Align themselves with whistleblowers. Engage with the press. And suddenly, they are no longer a peer but a concernârecast as a psychological risk rather than a legitimate critic of institutional dysfunction.
This dynamic is not unique to the NYPD. It echoes a long-standing American tradition of weaponizing psychiatry and psychology to suppress resistance. In the 19th century, enslaved Africans who fled captivity were diagnosed with âââa fabricated mental illness suggesting that the desire for freedom was pathological. In the 20th century, particularly during the McCarthy era, left-leaning activists and dissidents were labeled paranoid, unstable, or emotionally unfit. Psychiatric discrediting was a common tactic to undermine political credibility without engaging the substance of dissent. In modern policing, the same logic reappearsâthis time dressed in the language of âfitness,â âwellness,â and âstability.â
What makes the NYPD case especially egregious is the absence of scientific legitimacy behind its screening practices. The assessments lack validation under federal standards such as the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP), which require that employment testsâespecially those with disparate impactâbe demonstrably job-related and consistent with business necessity. Courts have interpreted UGESP to mandate not just statistical validation, but substantive relevance. Yet the NYPD has failed to produce any UGESP-compliant validation study supporting its psychological protocols, much less a study that distinguishes the predictive value of licensed versus unlicensed evaluators. The lack of empirical foundation compounds the constitutional and statutory violations already discussed. It transforms the psychological evaluation process from a flawed gatekeeping tool into a legally unsupportable, systematically biased practice.
This is not merely a matter of internal mismanagementâit is a matter of systemic design. The psychological exam functions, by design, as a disciplinary mechanism: a way to remove or discredit those who do not âfit.â And âfitness,â as defined by the institution, rarely maps onto emotional resilience, cultural competence, or integrity under pressure. More often, it maps onto conformity, silence, and allegiance to power. Those who fail to internalize institutional normsâor worse, expose themâbecome targets for elimination under the guise of psychological unsuitability.
It is telling that the NYPDâs psychological evaluators are permitted to operate without formal licensure, under a legally dubious interpretation of statutory exemptions, and without consistent professional supervision. The absence of proper credentials is not an oversightâit is a design feature. It ensures pliability, insulates the process from external scrutiny, and protects the institutional narrative. Unlicensed staff are easier to control, less likely to challenge improper directives, and more likely to operate in the shadows of legal ambiguity. This is not a protective system for public safetyâit is a structural mechanism for institutional protectionism.
And so the âfitnessâ framework endures. Not because it works, not because it is lawful, and certainly not because it is justâbut because it is useful. It serves the deeper, unstated function of reproducing a specific type of police officer and policing culture. One that appears stable, apolitical, and emotionally regulated on the surface, but is, in truth, shaped by invisible codes of conformity, exclusion, and retaliation.
The result is a policing institution that polices its members more ruthlessly than it polices its conductâwhere whistleblowers are silenced, reformers are pathologized, and dissenters are discarded through psychological assessments designed to protect power, not people.
This is the origin and enduring function of the psychological fitness regime in law enforcement. It is not a failed reformâit is a faithful execution of a much older mandate: to maintain the façade of order by disqualifying those who threaten the illusion.
IV. Institutional Evasion: How the NYPD Circumvents Statutory and Regulatory Oversight
The New York City Police Departmentâs systemic use of unlicensed individuals to conduct psychological evaluations is not merely a breach of professional ethics or administrative procedureâit is a clear violation of New York State law. Under the Education Law, particularly §§âŻ7601-a, 7605, 6512, and 6513, the practice of psychology is a tightly regulated profession requiring licensure or, in limited cases, a strictly defined temporary permit. The NYPD has circumvented these legal requirements through a combination of institutional opacity, self-serving misinterpretations of statutory exemptions, and an entrenched culture of impunityâthereby exposing the department, the City, and its leadership to legal, civil rights, and criminal liability.
Section defines the practice of psychology as the observation, evaluation, diagnosis, and modification of behavior to improve mental health, interpersonal relationships, organizational effectiveness, and life adjustment. This includesâbut is not limited toâpsychological testing, psychotherapy, the treatment of emotional or cognitive disorders, and even interventions tied to substance abuse or behavioral dysfunction. Section further defines âdiagnosis and treatmentâ as including not only labeling of psychological conditions, but also providing treatment by way of counseling, psychotherapy, marital or family therapy, and other psychological interventions. These are not vague functions; they are the very actions routinely performed by NYPD personnel who hold themselves out as âpsychologistsâ but lack the licensure or lawful authority required to do so.
Education Law makes it unlawful to engage in the practice of psychology without a valid license or board-issued limited permit. These limited permits are tightly constrained. They are issued only to applicants who have completed all doctoral requirements, including their dissertation; have met character and educational prerequisites; and are seeking supervised postdoctoral experience. The permit is valid for 12 months and may be renewed twice for a total of three yearsâbut only under the continuous supervision of a New York State-licensed psychologist. A separate permit may be granted to an out-of-state licensee newly residing in New York, but again, only under limited, regulated conditions. In both cases, the permit holder must remain under direct supervision and may not independently evaluate or diagnose.
Despite this clarity, the NYPD has operated as if §âŻ7605 does not apply to its operations. Investigations and court filings have revealed that the department employs unlicensed personnelâsome without even limited permitsâwho conduct interviews, perform psychological evaluations, and issue written recommendations about a candidateâs or officerâs fitness for duty. These individuals are often embedded within the chain of command and treated as licensed professionals, even though the State Education Departmentâs official verification portal shows no record of them being legally authorized to practice psychology. The NYPD compounds this violation by failing to identify these personnel as âinternsâ or âtraineesâ under supervision; instead, it presents them as fully credentialed experts to internal staff, external agencies, and even the courts.
This conduct is not merely unethicalâit is criminal. Education Law §⯠makes it a Class E felony for any person to practice or offer to practice a profession for which a license is required without such a license or a valid permit. It also criminalizes aiding or abetting the unlicensed practice of such a profession. The statute escalates to a Class E felony if an institution or individual knowingly aids or employs three or more unlicensed persons in this manner. The use of âpsychologistâ as a title without authorization is separately addressed under , which makes such misuse a Class A misdemeanor. It elevates the offense to a Class E felony if three or more individuals are unlawfully using the title under the employerâs watch. These statutes are not symbolicâthey are enforceable laws designed to protect the public from precisely the kind of systemic abuse currently embedded in the NYPDâs psychological screening process.
This pattern of statutory evasion intersects with violations of federal anti-discrimination law. The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP) require that psychological testing be job-related, validated through empirical studies, and demonstrably non-discriminatory. The NYPD has failed to produce any documentation showing its psychological assessments meet these standards. It has never released data on the racial, gender, or disability-related impact of its evaluations, nor has it provided third-party validation studies as required under UGESP. The result is a black-box screening mechanism that disproportionately impacts protected classesâparticularly Black applicants, whistleblowers, and individuals perceived as challenging authorityâwhile evading both state licensure requirements and federal civil rights mandates.
The departmentâs process is further tainted by its procedural opacity. Applicants flagged for further review often find themselves referred to psychological evaluators based on vague allegations, unsupported behavioral impressions, or even their decision to retain legal counsel. These referrals are then assessed by unlicensed personnel, often without any documentation of the referral criteria, scope of evaluation, or supervisory oversight. Officers subjected to post-incident assessmentsâsuch as after filing internal complaints or engaging in protected speechâreport being suspended, stripped of their firearms, or involuntarily placed on modified duty based on recommendations made by unlicensed individuals. In this way, the department has weaponized psychological evaluation as a retaliatory tool, bypassing due process protections and evading lawful scrutiny.
What makes this misconduct even more egregious is the absence of action from the institutions charged with oversight and enforcement. The Governor, who oversees the Executive Department responsible for licensing professions, has taken no steps to initiate an investigation or issue directives. The Mayor of New York City, despite direct oversight of the NYPD, has not intervened to halt these practices or demand compliance with state law. The State Legislature and New York City Council, both of which have the authority to conduct hearings and amend statutory loopholes, have remained silent. The New York State Education Department, empowered to issue, monitor, and revoke limited permits and licenses, has failed to audit or intervene despite widespread evidence of unlicensed practice. The New York State Attorney General, as the chief law enforcement officer of the state, has not initiated a civil rights investigation. The Manhattan and Queens District Attorneysâwhose jurisdictions include NYPD headquarters and several affected officersâhave made no public inquiry into whether the departmentâs actions constitute criminal violations under §§âŻ6512 and 6513. And at the federal level, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission () has yet to intervene, despite clear evidence of discriminatory impact, retaliatory use of medical referrals, and noncompliance with UGESP.
This is not an obscure regulatory failure. It is a widespread, deliberate institutional circumvention of well-established law. The consequences are staggering: thousands of applicants and officers may have been unjustly disqualified or removed from duty; civil rights may have been routinely violated; and public trust in the fairness and lawfulness of the NYPDâs internal operations has been further eroded.
These are not issues that can be resolved internally. This moment calls for coordinated oversight and enforcement. The Governor, Attorney General, District Attorneys, State Education Department, State and City Legislators, the Mayor, and federal regulators must all play their roles. Investigations must be launched. Legislative reforms must be passed to close exploited loopholes. And those responsible for knowing, institutionalized violations of the Education Law must be held accountable under criminal and civil statutes alike.
The NYPD cannot credibly police the streets of New York while blatantly circumventing the very laws it is sworn to uphold. The unlawful practice of psychology within the department must be dismantledânot just in policy, but through structural reform, legal enforcement, and independent oversight.
V. A Civil Rights Crisis in Plain Sight: The Legal and Constitutional Consequences of NYPDâs Psychological Screening Regime
In a striking development, a recently retired NYPD official confirmed what many of us have long suspected. There are no legal exemptions that authorize the department to employ unlicensed individuals as âpsychologistsâ to conduct psychological evaluations. This officialâwho served for decades and, during a temporary assignment at the New York State Education Department, investigated similar violationsârevealed that the issue was flagged internally as early as the 1980s. Despite early warnings, the NYPD not only failed to correct course but also embedded the practice into its institutional framework, allowing it to persist across generations of leadership. The pattern has endured through multiple mayoralties, commissioners, and oversight bodiesâuntouched by public criticism, legal reforms, or regulatory intervention.
What began as a workaround has calcified into a deliberate policy of evasionâone that flagrantly violates New York Education Law, specifically §§ 7605, 6512, and 6513. The consistency of this misconduct over more than four decades signals not confusion about the law, but a conscious refusal to obey it. That refusal has come at significant costânot just to the credibility of the NYPD, but to the constitutional and statutory rights of thousands of individuals who have been disqualified, silenced, or retaliated against under the pretense of psychological âfitness.â
The NYPDâs systemic misuse of psychological evaluations is not merely an administrative or regulatory failureâit is a profound civil rights crisis. When unlicensed or improperly supervised individuals render psychological judgments that lead to disqualification, career derailment, or forced removal from service, the implications go well beyond licensure. They implicate core federal and state protectionsâincluding equal opportunity in public employment, anti-retaliation safeguards, due process guarantees, and disability rights under the ADA.
The current screening regimeâopaque, unvalidated, and devoid of independent oversightâhas become a vehicle for arbitrary exclusion. It routinely enables disparate treatment and adverse impact against candidates and officers from protected classes, particularly Black, brown, immigrant, LGBTQ+, and politically vocal individuals. Whether the gatekeeping occurs at the point of initial hiring, during return from medical leave, or as a tool of retaliation against whistleblowers, the effect is the same: individuals are removed from consideration based on subjective, often unreviewable assessmentsâassessments made by individuals who lack the legal authority or clinical qualifications to make them.
This is the precise danger that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted to prevent. Under the disparate impact doctrine, employment practices that are facially neutral but disproportionately exclude members of protected groupsâand are not job-related or consistent with business necessityâviolate federal law. In , 401 U.S. 424 (1971), the Supreme Court made clear: intent is not required. If a practice results in exclusion and lacks empirical validation, it is unlawful.
Yet the NYPD has never subjected its psychological screening process to rigorous validation under the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP), promulgated in 1978. These guidelines require scientific evidence that selection procedures are job-related, fair, and predictive of actual performance. Nor has the NYPD demonstrated that its use of psychological evaluation meets the test of business necessity. Instead, it has created a system that outsources career-altering decisions to unlicensed and unsupervised staff, under the pretense of institutional authority.
Even if the department could justify psychological evaluations in the abstract, it must validate its specific methodsâthe instruments used, the interpretive standards applied, and the qualifications of the assessors. It has not. This is not merely a technical failing; it is a structural abuse of discretion with life-altering consequences.
At the state and local levels, the New York State Human Rights Law (NYSHRL) and New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL) impose even broader obligations. Under the NYCHRLâs liberal construction mandate (N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 8-130), employers are barred from engaging in conduct that âtends to excludeâ candidates based on protected characteristics. Discriminatory impact alone suffices, even without overt intent. A screening process that disproportionately burdens certain demographic groupsâwithout validation or transparencyâmay thus be per se unlawful under city law.
The problem does not stop at exclusion. There is a troubling pattern of retaliation embedded within the psychological referral system. Numerous officers and applicants report that referrals often follow protected activity: filing discrimination complaints, speaking to the media, reporting misconduct, or resisting cronyism. The psychological exam becomes a pretext for institutional reprisalâa way to sideline dissenters under the cloak of clinical judgment.
And because the system lacks procedural safeguardsâno formal referral criteria, no independent psychiatric opinion, no external appealâthese individuals are left defenseless against institutional power. This amounts to a de facto blacklist, constructed with tools that would never withstand legal scrutiny in any other employment context.
The civil rights implications are further magnified when considered through the lens of intersectionality. A Black woman applicant, for example, may face compounded bias based on racial and gendered assumptions about emotional volatility or âattitude.â LGBTQ+ applicants may be pathologized through outdated diagnostic filters. Immigrant or bilingual candidates may be flagged for âodd affectâ or âinappropriate expressionâ simply due to cultural differences. Without validation, cultural competency, and accountability, psychological screening becomes a mirror of institutional prejudice, not a measure of emotional readiness.
These harms are not speculative. Both qualitative accounts and quantitative patterns support them. City & Stateâs investigation revealed disturbing trends: 55 of 74 assessors lacked licenses, some accumulating over 2,000 days of unlawful practice. Turnover was high. Supervision was inconsistent. And perhaps most telling: the NYPD refuses to disclose demographic data on who is referred for psychological review, who is disqualified, and under what circumstances. This absence of transparency is itself a violation of public accountability and civil rights compliance.
The constitutional concerns are equally grave. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, public employees and applicants have a right to equal protection and procedural due process. Disqualifying individuals based on vague, arbitrary, or retaliatory criteriaâadministered by unlicensed actorsâraises serious questions of legal legitimacy. So too does the absence of any published policy governing who gets referred for psychological evaluation and why. In the absence of clear rules, the system becomes a disciplinary weapon, selectively deployed against those who challenge power.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (), employers cannot require medical or psychological examinations unless they are job-related and consistent with business necessityâand even then, such evaluations must be conducted by qualified professionals, under strict confidentiality. The NYPDâs current practiceâwhere unlicensed staff issue binding judgments, without oversight, accountability, or transparencyâfalls far short of ADA requirements.
Taken together, these violations represent more than a policy failure. They represent a comprehensive breakdown in lawful governanceâa regime in which discretion replaces discipline, bias replaces science, and power replaces law. The psychological screening process has become a bureaucratic cudgelâused not to identify instability, but to enforce conformity. It is a system that silently sidelines dissent, filters out diversity, and perpetuates the illusion of institutional cohesion by eliminating those who challenge it.
Until this system is dismantled and rebuiltâwith scientific integrity, legal compliance, independent oversight, and civil rights protections at its coreâthe NYPD will continue to operate as an outlier, not just in its abuse of psychology, but in its defiance of law.
VI. Enforcement Paralysis: Regulatory Inaction and the Breakdown of Oversight
The NYPDâs long-standing use of unlicensed individuals to conduct psychological evaluations would not have endured for decades without a deeper systemic failure: the paralysis of oversight. While the conduct itself is criminal under New York Education Lawâtriggering Class E felony liability under §§ 6512 and 6513âit has persisted in plain view across multiple mayoral administrations, police commissioners, and agency heads. This persistence reflects more than mere bureaucratic inertia; it reveals a deliberate unwillingness among oversight bodies to enforce the law where the violator is the NYPD.
At the state level, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) is tasked with enforcing professional licensure standards, including through the Office of the Professions. In nearly every other regulated industryâmedicine, social work, therapy, nursing, teachingâNYSED aggressively pursues unlicensed practice. Its enforcement arm routinely issues cease-and-desist letters, levies fines, and refers criminal cases to prosecutors for violations of licensure statutes. Yet, when it comes to the NYPD, NYSEDâs enforcement posture has been conspicuously dormant. Despite investigative reporting, public records, and now on-the-record accounts from former officials confirming the existence of unlicensed practice within the NYPDâs psychological screening unit, there is no public record of NYSED taking disciplinary or prosecutorial action against the department or its personnel. This absence of enforcement is not due to a lack of jurisdiction. It is a failure of will.
The problem is compounded by prosecutorial silence. The Manhattan District Attorney and Queens District Attorney have clear jurisdiction to prosecute violations of Education Law § 6512 and § 6513 committed within their respective counties. These are not minor regulatory infractionsâthey are criminal offenses that directly impact the integrity of hiring in the largest police force in the United States. Yet, to date, there is no indication that either office has initiated an investigation, let alone sought indictments. This prosecutorial inaction is particularly troubling given that both offices have previously prosecuted unlicensed mental health providers in other contextsâschool psychologists, private therapists, and even spiritual counselors who misrepresented their qualifications. The NYPD, uniquely, appears to benefit from an unwritten immunity to these same standards.
Even within the City government, oversight has proven illusory. The New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) and its NYPD-specific Inspector Generalâs Office were created to root out systemic abuses and promote accountability in city agencies, including the police. Yet no public investigation or report has emerged from either entity on the issue of unlicensed psychological screeningâa problem now confirmed to have persisted since the early 1980s. The contradiction is glaring. The City of New York employs psychologists in other agenciesâACS, DOE, HRAâwho are subject to strict licensure and supervision requirements. The NYPD alone is permitted to run a parallel, unregulated psychological regime shielded from scrutiny. This asymmetry is not simply a policy failureâit is an equal protection concern for every applicant and officer subjected to a different standard based solely on the agency involved.
Internally, the NYPDâs own legal and risk management apparatus has also failed. The Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters (DCLM) is charged with ensuring departmental compliance with federal, state, and local law. Yet, through either omission or commission, the Legal Bureau has permitted this practice to continue. Whether through misinterpretation of § 7605 or a failure to perform fundamental statutory analysis, the departmentâs legal arm has failed to intercede even as unlicensed personnel rendered career-altering decisions. This failure is particularly inexcusable given the departmentâs resources, including access to experienced counsel and policy analysts. As of this writing, the NYPD has not produced a single legal memorandum, advisory opinion, or legislative analysis justifying its reliance on unlicensed evaluatorsâbecause no such exemption exists. This is not legal ambiguity. It is institutional avoidance.
The consequences of this enforcement paralysis are not confined to the NYPD. They ripple across the broader landscape of public employment, professional regulation, and civil rights enforcement. If the largest municipal police department in the country can flout licensure laws for four decades without consequence, what message does that send to other agencies, licensees, or regulated professions? The selective application of the law not only undermines public trustâit collapses the very principle of the rule of law.
This silence from regulatory bodies is not neutral. It operates as tacit approval. It emboldens the NYPD to continue using unlicensed personnel, to reject external scrutiny, and to discredit those who challenge the status quo. And it sends a chilling message to whistleblowers, civil rights attorneys, and harmed applicants: the law may be on your side, but the system is not.
Perhaps most disturbing is the self-reinforcing nature of this oversight vacuum. Because unlicensed evaluators continue to render disqualifying decisions, their presence is normalized. Because those decisions are rarely overturnedâand appeals are shrouded in opacityâthe practice appears legitimate. This institutional loop creates a feedback system where illegality becomes practice, and practice becomes policy. Enforcement agencies, seeing no immediate outrage, reallocate resources elsewhere. Prosecutors, fearing political fallout, decline to act. Legislators, lacking data, remain silent. Meanwhile, candidates are disqualified, careers are ended, and lives are upendedâall without lawful process.
It is against this backdrop that reform must be pursued. The NYPDâs conduct is not a relic of the pastâit is a present and ongoing legal violation, shielded by inertia and institutional complicity. Breaking that shield requires more than lawsuits. It requires coordinated action by licensing authorities, civil rights enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and the public to insist on uniform application of the law. Statutes do not enforce themselves. And silence, especially when deliberate, is not neutralityâit is abdication.
VII. Case Study: Marquis Anderson and the Structural Weaponization of Evaluation
To understand how the NYPDâs unlawful practices translate from statute to lived experience, one need only examine the case of Marquis Anderson. His story is not an anomalyâit is a direct product of the departmentâs institutional reliance on unlicensed personnel, its manipulation of psychological evaluations, and its broader pattern of circumventing legal accountability. Through his case, we see not only the legal violations in action, but also the deeply human cost of a system weaponized against those it claims to assess. Andersonâs experience offers a concrete, alarming illustration of how abstract statutory breaches can become vehicles for injustice, retaliation, and career destruction under the guise of psychological âfitness.â Beyond lost careers and due process violations, the emotional and psychological harm inflicted by these practicesâespecially when carried out by unqualified evaluatorsâcannot be overstated.
Marquis C. Andersonâs experience with the NYPD exemplifies the institutional misuse of psychological evaluationsânot as tools of public safety or clinical insight, but as instruments of discretionary control, racial exclusion, and statutory evasion. His case, now the subject of litigation in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, offers a precise and chilling look into how the department structurally weaponizes its psychological evaluation process, often under the guise of administrative procedure, to disqualify Black probationary officers through legally dubious means.
Anderson, a graduate of Lehman College and a successful candidate in the NYPDâs 2022 hiring cycle, completed and passed the full battery of assessments required for appointment as a probationary police officer. This included the NYPDâs psychological screening administered by the Candidate Assessment Divisionâa unit distinct from the Medical Divisionâs Psychological Evaluation Section. After clearing these hurdles, he officially entered the Police Academy as part of the October 2022 class. His attendance was interrupted three weeks later when he contracted COVID-19 and followed departmental protocol by calling out sick.
Rather than referring him to a licensed physician, the departmentâs Sick Desk inexplicably routed him to the Psychological Evaluation Section of the Medical Division. There, he was evaluated by Vanja Radoncic, who identified herself to himâand was listed in NYPD filingsâas âDr. Radoncic, Department Psychologist for the NYPD in the Psychological Evaluation Section.â Anderson alleges that Radoncic never explained the reason for this referral or the basis of her involvement. Nonetheless, she placed him on “Restricted Duty,” effectively suspending his ability to complete tactical and firearms training, which are essential for academy graduation.
Over the next several months, Anderson remained sidelined without a clear justification. He was required to attend repeated sessions with Radoncic, who, despite the gravity of her assessments, refused to communicate with his licensed mental health counselor, Paola Disla, whom Anderson had consulted for clarity and support. Disla allegedly made multiple attempts to reach Radoncic, to no avail. According to Anderson, neither Disla nor Radoncic could articulate any clinical basis for his continued restrictionâyet Radoncic formally recommended his separation from the NYPD in June 2023, citing unspecified âdata.â Andersonâs entire class graduated without him.
In his legal complaint, Anderson alleges that this decision was retaliatory, following his quiet but persistent questioning of the departmentâs handling of his case. He also highlights a pattern: similarly situated white probationary officers were not subject to the same re-evaluation processes or terminations, even where their personal or performance histories were comparable or less favorable.
More damning is what City & State uncovered. Although Radoncic had held the NYPD title of âpsychologistâ since 2019, a search of the New York State Education Departmentâs verification portal turned up no record of her ever holding a license or limited permit to practice psychology in New York. This raises grave legal implications. New York Education Law §§ 6512 and 6513 make it a felony to practice psychology or use the title âpsychologistâ without appropriate licensure or Board-issued exemption. These provisions exist precisely to prevent the kind of harm Anderson allegesâlife-altering decisions made by unqualified personnel operating outside legal boundaries.
The NYPD, when confronted, claimed that Radoncic and others were exempt from licensure under a provision in Education Law that allows certain graduate students working toward their credentials to act as âcertified school psychologistsâ in educational settings. But Radoncic never used the title âcertified school psychologist,â and the NYPDâs Medical Division is not an âapproved educational setting.â Her evaluations also concerned the psychological fitness of police recruitsânot schoolchildren. Moreover, Municipal Police Training Council (MPTC) guidelines, which govern law enforcement hiring standards across New York State, clearly require that only fully licensed psychologists may evaluate officer candidates.
In an interview with City & State, Assembly Member Manny De Los Santos, a member of the New York State Assemblyâs Education Committee, expressed alarm at the NYPDâs justification: âIâve never heard the Education Lawâs exemption for the Board of Psychology’s credentialing exemption used in this way,â he said. âIt is disrespectful to the profession to have students who have not yet finished their graduate degrees making these important assessmentsâand this practice needs to end.â
Andersonâs lawsuit now accuses the City and senior NYPD officialsâincluding Commissioner Edward Caban and Medical Division leadershipâof unlawful discrimination under the New York State Human Rights Law and the New York City Human Rights Law. He further alleges that the NYPD violates the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP), a federal standard adopted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which mandates that psychological testing procedures be job-related, validated, and free from discriminatory impact.
The facts laid out in both the verified complaint and independent investigative reporting suggest not only individual misconduct, but a coordinated pattern of statutory circumvention. Andersonâs discharge was not the result of objective psychological science, but of a system rigged by subjective discretion, racial bias, and apparent illegalitiesâfronted by individuals acting without lawful authority to render psychological judgments. His case stands as a powerful indictment of the NYPDâs entire psychological evaluation framework and a cautionary tale for other departments nationwide.
VIII. The Sealed Records Parallel â A Pattern of Statutory Distortion
The NYPDâs use of unlicensed individuals to conduct psychological evaluations is not an isolated instance of statutory deviation. Rather, it reflects a broader institutional pattern of disregarding clear legal mandates when those mandates stand in the way of operational convenience or control. Nowhere is this pattern more striking than in the departmentâs long-running misuse of sealed arrest records in violation of New York Criminal Procedure Law §§⯠and .
Under these statutes, when an arrest is terminated in favor of the accusedâwhether by dismissal, acquittal, or other favorable dispositionâthe associated records are sealed as a matter of law. These provisions are not merely procedural niceties; they are statutory privacy protections grounded in the presumption of innocence and intended to shield individuals from stigma, discrimination, and unwarranted scrutiny. The law is unambiguous: sealed records âshall not be made available to any person or public or private agencyâ absent a court order or a narrow statutory exception. Yet the NYPD has, for years, treated this statutory firewall as a speed bump.
In , Index No. 153739/2018, the Supreme Court of the State of New York issued a scathing rebuke of the departmentâs unlawful practices. The case centered on the NYPDâs pattern of instructing personnelâboth explicitly and through internal policiesâto access and consider sealed arrest records when making decisions about hiring, promotion, and internal discipline. Plaintiffs, whose arrests had been sealed under CPL §âŻ160.50, alleged that the department continued to rely on these expunged events to deny employment or advancement, violating not only statutory law but also constitutional due process guarantees.
The court agreed. In a preliminary injunction issued in 2019, Justice Lyle E. Frank prohibited the NYPD from instructing any employee, agent, or contractor to access or use sealed arrest records without a court order, calling the departmentâs justifications âinsufficient as a matter of law.â This ruling represented a rare judicial intervention into NYPD internal practice. It affirmed what civil rights advocates had long argued: the department had systematized an unlawful workaround of statutes designed to protect the reputational and economic well-being of marginalized individuals.
The R.C. case is particularly relevant to the issue of unlicensed psychological evaluations because it reveals a common institutional pathology: when faced with legal obligations that limit discretionary authorityâbe it the need for professional licensure or the statutory sealing of recordsâthe NYPD has consistently sought to reinterpret, narrow, or ignore those obligations. Just as the department tried to justify its misuse of sealed records by appealing to vague public safety rationales, it now attempts to justify employing unlicensed âpsychologistsâ by invoking distorted readings of Education Law exemptions not intended for law enforcement psychological evaluations.
What links both violations is the erosion of the rule of law under the pretext of administrative necessity. In both contexts, affected individualsâdisproportionately Black and Latinoâsuffer tangible harms: job loss, reputational damage, disqualification from civil service opportunities, and systemic exclusion from full participation in public life. And in both contexts, the departmentâs position has been that oversight is optional and compliance with binding statutes is discretionary.
The sealed records abuse and the unauthorized psychological evaluations represent two facets of the same institutional phenomenon: the NYPDâs willingness to weaponize processes that should protect the individual, transforming them instead into tools of exclusion, discipline, and opacity. That pattern must be named, litigated, and broken. For if a public safety agency can systematically violate state law without consequence in one domain, it will do so in othersâuntil the law is not a restraint, but a mere suggestion.
IX. Conclusion: Reclaiming Legality, Restoring Trust
The NYPDâs long-standing use of unlicensed personnel to conduct psychological evaluations is not merely an administrative lapseâit is a systemic violation of New York State Education Law, federal civil rights protections, and the constitutional guarantees owed to every public employee and applicant. As the case of Marquis Anderson demonstrates, the consequences are not abstract. Careers are derailed, reputations destroyed, and opportunities deniedâall under the false imprimatur of mental health âfitnessâ assessments rendered by individuals who lack the legal authority to do so.
This practice is not new. Evidence traces its origins to at least the early 1980s, revealing decades of institutional evasion and statutory misinterpretation. From its misuse of Education Law §§ 7605, 6512, and 6513, to its blatant disregard for federal validation requirements under UGESP, the NYPD has engineered a system in which psychological gatekeeping becomes a shield for discrimination, retaliation, and the exclusion of those who challenge the status quo.
These are not isolated abusesâthey are embedded in a broader culture of discretionary overreach. The departmentâs prior misuse of sealed arrest records under CPL §§ 160.50 and 160.55 mirrors its current circumvention of professional licensing laws: both exploit legal gray areas to maintain unchecked control over who is deemed âfitâ to serve. In doing so, the NYPD undermines public confidence, flouts democratic principles, and perpetuates structural inequality.
Corrective action is overdue. The State Education Department must immediately audit the NYPDâs psychological evaluation units for compliance with licensing requirements. The New York State Attorney General and local District Attorneys must open criminal and civil rights investigations into these practices. Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams must move beyond platitudes and commit to absolute transparency and oversight. The State Legislature must review the statutory exemptions the NYPD purports to rely uponâand close any loopholes that enable unlawful conduct. The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) must examine the disparate impact these evaluations have had on protected-class applicants under Title VII.
This is not merely about policy. It is about legality. It is about harm. And it is about powerâhow it is wielded, who wields it, and who pays the price when itâs abused. When police departments appoint themselves both gatekeeper and lawbreaker, the result is predictable: injustice disguised as public safety, and exclusion justified through pseudoscientific means.
The law was never meant to be a mirror for institutional preference. It was meant to be a barrier against abuse. It is time we enforced it as such.