For more than an hour in August 2014, Shannon Browne sat with investigators at CHP’s Valley Division office in Sacramento, at first hesitant, then growing more confident as she laid out her concerns. Instructors were manipulating scores on tests at Cal Fire’s firefighting academy in Ione, she told the officers.
Browne, who writes test materials for academy cadets and records the scores, said that until earlier that year instructors routinely threw out results for questions that some cadets couldn’t answer. She said they repeatedly told her and other staff to add points to the scores of cadets to compensate. Browne estimated the changes probably affected scores on half the tests in recent years.
The orders, she told CHP Sgt. Daniel Webb and Lt. Ezery Beauchamp, made her uncomfortable because she believed they were wrong.
“Instead of saying, ‘Hey, we’re not teaching this correctly,’ and keeping (the questions) ... they were just passing students,” Browne said during a 70-minute interview recorded by the investigators. “They were going to pass everyone … and I know that this is a safety issue. This is someone’s safety and life, and other people are depending on them. … They (the cadets) should not be passed if they don’t know the material. I mean, these are critical basic skills.” For more than a year now, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has been climbing out from a scandal that started with the murder of an academy instructor’s mistress and ballooned into a wide-ranging investigation of academy activities. The agency since has dismissed or disciplined 15 employees for a range of behaviors, including drinking on duty, using state property to meet with prostitutes, and sexual harassment. It accepted the resignation of another.