Selecting, Assessing and Evaluating Applicant Cultural Diversity Background in Hiring Police Officers

As a Retired California Peace Officer it is the author's sincere hopes and wishes that this particular book can open and create a dialogue on "How Police Officers Are Selected, Assessed and Evaluated" in becoming a police officer in the community.

William F. Gaines feels strongly that this is the right book at the right time. The book is an attempt to develop a broad range of questions in order to develop a testing model that can be utilized to assess whether or not this particular applicant has the life experiences, cultural awareness, social interactions, peer group associations and if this applicant has the temperament suitable in becoming a duly sworn police officer.

The book takes a closer look at how cultural diversity should and could play an important role in selecting, assessing and evaluating those applicants prior to becoming police officers. This is extremely important and very crucial when police officers have contact with those of a different racial/ethnic group, different lifestyle, different environment and very different social conditions.

About the Author

William F. Gaines is a duly sworn Retired California Peace Officer with the California Youth Authority better known today as the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The California Youth Authority was a Juvenile/Adult Correctional agency that incarcerated both Juvenile and Adult criminal offenders ages sixteen through twenty-five.

Gaines is fortunate and humble as the only one among his siblings to graduate from a California Community College and a California State University. In 1979, he graduated from California State University in Sacramento, California, with a B.A. degree in Sociology and a minor in Psychology. While attending California State University in Sacramento he was able to graduate with honors for achieving and maintaining the dean's list from 1977 through 1979.

Having worked in both classifications as a California Peace Officer responsible for Custody/Security and Treatment has afforded Gaines invaluable knowledge and field experience in dealing with criminal offenders from all racial groups, all geographic locations in California, all economic groups, all social classes, all street gang affiliations and those offenders deemed untreatable, unmanageable and hard core.

After spending time in the County Foster Home system one thing life has taught Gaines is to always believe in yourself and eventually others will believe in you.