Hiring process reopens for Lincoln police officer

LINCOLN – Police Chief Hank Dusenberry will interview 11 candidates starting Thursday for an open police officer’s post after an earlier candidate flunked the state police academy, he said Tuesday.

The candidate failed to meet the training’s professional values standards – a general term covering integrity, veracity, punctuality, among other things – and left the academy about 13 weeks into the 18-week term, Dusenberry said.

That left the town in the lurch for the $7,000 the candidate earned, plus about $1,000 in academy fees, and an undetermined amount of overtime paid to fill the sixth slot on the Lincoln Police Department’s roster, Town Manager Glenn Aho said.

“It happens,” Aho said of the officer’s dismissal. “It’s a risk that you take whenever you hire a new employee. Fortunately, this is only our first time.”

According to academy officials, such a failure is relatively rare. It happens maybe once or twice a year, Dusenberry said.

Town testing and interviewing usually does a good job of finding qualified candidates, Dusenberry said. Of the 11 candidates due to be interviewed, two have full-time police experience, as officers in the Fairfield and Rockland areas.

Another is a Maine resident who will be flying in from Kosovo, where he has been working for a private security firm, Dusenberry said.

Officer candidates must pass physical and psychological examinations, a background check and be fingerprinted before they attend the academy to earn their police certificate. The job pays $14.57 an hour for new hires, Dusenberry said.

The town’s hiring process should be completed in March, with academy attendance, if necessary, to follow.

The department has six full-time officers and a secretary.