Two Dozen Riverside Deputies Reportedly Cheated On Tests

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA -- At least 25 Riverside County Sheriff's Department employees cheated on tests in 2015, but the alleged dishonesty didn't affect their careers with the department. The Desert Sun this week released a report detailing how the employees cheated on promotional tests, prompting officials to retest more than 200 employees.

The Desert Sun cited "agency documents and more than 15 hours of interview recordings obtained by the newspaper."

The apparent scam began when a deputy took the test and wrote the test questions down immediately after the test. The questions were then shared with others, the newspaper reported.

"Leaked exam questions had spread through the sheriff’s department like a virus," the Desert Sun wrote.

The Desert Sun reported the "test consists of a 100-question written exam, a 50-question computer exam and an oral exam during which deputies must explain how a detective should respond to example scenarios that change every year."

But the incident detailed in the department's records may not be the only time employees cheated.

"In one interview, a veteran employee at the center of the scandal said deputies had a longstanding 'culture' of sharing test questions, and that the practice was so common that he didn’t even realize it was forbidden. Another suspect who was grilled in a two-hour interview initially said internal affairs would 'have to talk to a lot of people' to unravel the cheating scandal, but later claimed he was just joking and said he couldn’t remember the names of any of the co-workers he had studied with," the newspaper wrote.

The Desert Sun reported, despite the cheating, some were still promoted to higher rank within the department.

In a statement to the newspaper, officials said proper action was taken to address the cheating, and that "it had added safeguards to make employee testing more secure."

The Riverside County Sheriff's Department employs more than 4,000 people, making it the second largest sheriff's office in California.

--Patch file photo by Renee Schiavone