By Tom Shortell
The Morning Call
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The squeak of sneakers on concrete filled the gym in West Easton as 21 hopefuls raced up and down stairs, ran suicide sprints and surged through push-ups. Men in uniforms urged them on and counted out the final seconds.
The agility test may have resembled a tryout for a high school sports team, but the people running through the exercise were job applicants to the Northampton County Prison. The exercise was meant to test whether they possess the strength to carry out the sometimes-grim duties of being a corrections officer.
As part of the test, to see whether a job candidate could stop a suicidal inmate, each person had to lift a 100-pound punching bag for one minute to remove tension from the chain it was hanging from.
The applicants last Friday were the first batch of recruits to go through the new agility test.
Previously, to give an old test that included sit-ups, push-ups, a 300-meter dash and a 1.5-mile run, the county had to schedule drills over weeks to free up the necessary facilities and correctional officials, said Al Crivellaro, the prison’s operations administrator of personnel. The new test takes a single applicant seven minutes to complete.
“The old one was more of an endurance test,” Crivellaro said.
It was an endurance test that failed to reflect the demands of the job, said Daniel Keen, director of corrections. More than 100 otherwise qualified candidates, Keen said, were turned away for failing to pass the old test.
The rejections came as job openings piled up, forcing corrections officers to work frequent mandatory overtime to maintain state-required staffing levels. Although county Executive John Brown started bringing in new corrections officers this year after a hiring freeze in 2014, there are still 27 vacancies.
At the suggestion of union leadership, Keen and prison administrators began retooling the test to reflect the job’s actual physical demands. The sit-ups were yanked in favor of a ladder drill, and the dash was shortened but had steps added to reflect the many staircases at Northampton County Prison, among other changes.
Keen said the administration recycled drills used in other correctional officer academies across the commonwealth.
“I’ve been all over. I’ve tried to bring in the best practices that I’ve encountered and give it to the individuals here,” said Keen, who has worked in corrections for the state and for Bedford, Clinton, Franklin and Montgomery counties in the past 10 years.
Russ Attanasio, union president, did not return messages seeking comment on the new agility test.
Keen said he’s not concerned that he’s making the test easy. The county based its passing times on the times of current guards who took the test before the new candidates. As part of the changes, the county also eliminated a six-month waiting period that failing cadets had to endure before applying again.
“If I have an applicant who takes the test a second time, I have a dedicated person who wants a job,” Keen said.
Friday’s 21 applicants, all of them first-timers, ranged from a petite woman who may not weigh 100 pounds, to a man so muscular that correction officers running the test joked his shoulders wouldn’t fit under one tight spot. Most of them passed, although some struggled with dragging a 165-pound dummy across the gym.
Michael Lavender sucked for air after completing the test. The 21-year-old Allentown resident is studying to become a physical therapist at Lehigh Carbon Community College, but going into law enforcement has always intrigued him. After Lavender finished with time to spare, Crivellaro scheduled him for an interview with county officials, putting him one step closer to landing a job with the county.
“I’m a little bit out of shape. I wouldn’t consider it hard,” he said, adding that the most challenging part was getting out of bed for the 8 a.m. start time.
Others might disagree. Of the 129 people who took the test, only 47 passed, according to Director of Administration Luis Campos. Many also had failed the old endurance test.
“They look good,” Keen said of those who did pass. “We got some athletes here who are going through the system.”