New York Local Police Lieutenant exam format
The Second- and Third-Line Police Supervisors test is one examination the New York State Department of Civil Service writes and rates, and local civil service agencies administer. Here is what the Department publishes about it, and what it does not.
- Format
- Multiple choice, four options
- Time allowance
- 6 hours overall
- Subject areas
- Five, listed on your own announcement
- Item count
- Not published
- Per-area weighting
- Not published
- Passing score
- Not published in this guide
The five subject areas, in the Department's own order
The guide names five, and both Orange County Lieutenant announcements reproduce them word for word.
- Knowledge of law enforcement methods, practices and procedures — the guide prefixes "Knowledge of" on this one
- New York State laws — the Penal Law, Criminal Procedure Law, Vehicle and Traffic Law and Family Court Act
- Preparing written material in a police setting — three separate test tasks, and the only place in the guide with published question counts
- Understanding and interpreting written material — short reading passages with questions about them
- Planning, supervising and administering police programs and activities — the area with no first-line counterpart
The guide says it is not the complete list
This is the Department's own caveat and it is worth reading before any prep site's summary: "Not all subject areas that might appear in this Series are mentioned in this test guide ... The Examination Announcement will list the subject areas that will be included on the particular test you will be taking."
So the announcement governs and the guide does not. Five areas is what the guide publishes and what both Orange County announcements listed; your own agency may list more.
One count the Department does publish, and where
Almost nothing about the size of this test is public. Searched across the guide, "number of questions", "total of N questions", "weight", "percent of the" and "counts toward" return zero hits, so there is no total and no weighting.
The exception is inside subject area 3, which states its own per-task counts in prose: typically a page of notes followed by five questions, two Information Presentation questions from sentences, and three Paragraph Organization questions. That is the internal shape of one area. It is not a total, and it licenses no percentage of the examination.