Let me summarize:

1. In the summer of 2022, approximately 10,000 NYPD officers took the exam to get promoted to sergeant—you know, the one they’re always talking about on “Bluebloods,” now heading into its 15th and final season, Tom Selleck’s paene to NYC’s men and women in blue. This was an unprecedented number because the pandemic lockdown had delayed the exam for two years. The exam was offered in four sessions over two days to accommodate the unusually large number.

2. An investigation from the City’s Department of Investigation has determined that about 1,200 of the cops who participated cheated.

3. Those officers brought cell phones with cameras into the exam and participated in group chats to help each other through the test. They discussed possible answers and offered advice to each other, with those who had already taken the exam on the first day helping out the officers taking the exam on the second day.

4. This, of course, was explicitly forbidden, as the officers were told to place their cell phones in plastic bags under their chairs. But more than10% violated that rule.

5. They could do this with impunity because no steps were taken by the exam proctors to prevent cheating, other than saying, essentially, “Don’t you cheat, now!”

6. The Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which administered the test, didn’t even bother to make sure that officers taking the test were eligible. One retired NYPD captain took the exam for the 20th time, though he wasn’t eligible for any of them.

7. The City’s Department of Investigation responded to allegations of “widespread cheating, involving candidates who took the Exam on Day 1 and passed questions and answers to candidates taking the Exam on Day 2” with the just completed investigation. “DOI’s investigation substantiated that 95 percent of the Exam content was the same in the two sessions on Day 1 and the two sessions on Day 2, that candidates used their cell phones in the waiting room where the sessions were being offered, and that test takers shared content of the Exam from the first session on Day 1.”

8. Here’s the best part: the cheating probably didn’t help! The pass rate for the four-and-a-half hour test fell between day one and day two over the two days the test was offered. The report states, “DOI found that 28.20 percent of candidates passed the first session, 18.52 percent passed the second session, 4 percent of candidates passed the third session, and 12.51 percent of candidates passed the fourth session.”

I’m surprised only about 10% of the test-takers cheated. If it was that easy for law students to cheat on a final exam, I bet the percentage would be much higher.