| "They should not do away with any testing. They should take steps to make it tougher to get on the Police Department. You have to set a benchmark as far as scholastic ability," Fraternal Order of Police President Mark Donahue said.
Former police brass also have denounced an application-only process as insufficient. A panel of experts studied the issue and presented Mayor Daley with three options: continued outside administration of tests, taking the test in-house, and the no-test option. Daley is reviewing the report.
Bringing the testing process back in-house would be risky, given the city's track record.
In 1992, 134 Chicago Fire Department lieutenant exams were lost during a process administered by City Hall. The city subsequently agreed to pay a team of consultants $5.1 million to administer seven police and fire exams over one year. Daley defended the move at the time, saying the rank-and-file had lost faith in the city's ability to draft and administer the tests.
As of Thursday, the Police Department had 940 vacancies, 136 of them for sergeants. There are also 641 officers on desk duty and 730 officers on medical rolls thanks in part to a policy that allows officers to take as many as 365 sick days every two years.
Recent hiring has been modest. Last fall, the city used federal stimulus funds to add 86 officers, 30 of them for the CTA. In the spring, another 60 officers entered the police academy. They were assigned to O'Hare Airport, where 36 percent of the 171 police positions had been vacant. In July, Daley vowed to hire 100 more officers after a stunning outbreak of violence that saw three police officers gunned down in two months. | 
