I have completed questions for The Laws of Human Nature and Police Leadership and Administration: A 21st Century Strategic Approach. You can purchase questions at 2024 Sergeants Exam Material (not including GO's).  

While the books are lengthy,  nothing in them is unmanageable.  It will take commitment, but it will be worth it.  Start reading, and then start taking tests to measure your understanding. You've got this!

Materials for the Sergeant Exam have been posted.  The exam will cover the General Orders and two books (The Laws of Human Nature and Police Leadership and Administration: A 21st-Century Strategic Approach).  Questions covering the General Orders are available for purchase on the Products page.  I have already begun developing test questions for the other two books, and they will be available for purchase as soon as I am done.  I hope to have them complete in 1 1/2 to 2 weeks.  In the meantime, READ, READ, READ!  These are all LONG source materials, and it is going to require serious commitment.  Good luck! 

I have updated the questions to reflect the revisions to GO 400-28 and removed GO 400-23 questions.  GO 400-28 was revised on 07-18-24 and GO 400-23 was combined with GO 400-28.

Please make sure you are studying the newest material.  You should be studying GO 400-28 with a revision date of 07-18-24 and should remove GO 400-23 from your study materials.

I hope your studies are going well.  If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.

I have updated the ERP question bank to include all annexes to be tested for the 2024 Commanders Exam.  If you are preparing for the exam, please click here to purchase.

Materials for the 2024 Commanders Exam have been posted.  The exam will cover three books and the Emergency Response Plan.  Many of you have asked if I will post questions covering this material.  The answer: yes and no.  There are simply too few test takers for the Commanders Exam to make it worthwhile to spend the amount of time required to create quality exams.  

HOWEVER, I do have a good question bank covering the Emergency Response Plan.  The department recently updated the ERP and all but one of the Annexes.  I am in the process of updating all of the questions and hope to have them posted early next week.  I will send an email and post here when the material is available.

Don't wait until the test is announced to start studying.  Get ahead of the competition with the Blue Line Advances e-learning program.  With nearly 3,000 questions on HPD's General Orders, get the competitive edge to make sure you're prepared on test day.  Click here to purchase and get started today!

It's never too early to begin preparing for the 2024 test cycle.

I've finished updating all of the General Order questions issued to date, and will continue to make updates up to the date that the test is announced.  

Once you sign up and are approved, you should be able to register and log in at test.bluelineadvances.com. You may need to clear your browser cache if it doesn't work at first. If it continues not to work, let me know and we'll get it figured out. If you get the error message that "Sarge hasn't added you to the rolls" when you try to register after your approval email, let me know. The website works best on a desktop with a modern browser like Chrome, but it should work fairly well on tablet or mobile. If you have trouble with an older device, let me know and I'll see what I can do. 

If you start a test, you don't have to finish it immediately. You can go back via "Test List" and check both your completed and in-progress tests. If you click on an in-progress test, it will place you on your first unanswered question. It saves automatically each time you answer a question, so you can just close the window if you want to pause.

When you take your first few tests, do not get discouraged. At this stage in the game, 50% is a normal score. Some questions were designed to be especially difficult.  The testing companies like to play games with their tests where you are asked to "choose the best answer", meaning that more than one answer may appear correct, but you should choose the one that comes directly from that section of material.  Some questions are designed with this in mind.  If you miss a question and can't understand why, go to that General Order and read it carefully.  the correct answer may depend on a single word (or lack thereof).

Best of luck to everyone!   Promotional tests with HPD are known to be one of the most competitive processes among police departments nationwide.  That is a testament to the hard work that all of you put into studying and preparing. If you are committing to the sacrifices that you will need to make to promote, then go all in.  Understand that it will be frustrating at times, and is not fun, but it will be worth it in the end.  Reach out to me if you have any questions, issues, or just need an encouraging word.

~Bryan Bennett

After a 4-year pause, Blue Line Advances is set to return on April 1st!  As the go-to testing program for any HPD personnel looking to advance to the next level, I am happy to announce that the program will be up and running for those hoping to promote in the next testing cycle. Blue Line Advances is the brainchild of Commander Isaac Duplechain, and has helped countless HPD officers promote since its creation in 2016. This was brought to an abrupt and unexpected halt when the Department implemented a policy preventing Commander Duplechain from launching Blue Line Advances for the 2022 testing cycle.  Fortunately, Commander Duplechain has entrusted his business to Commander Bryan Bennett (Ret.), and as a recent retiree, Bryan is no longer constrained by such policy.

For those of you who do not know Bryan, he served the Houston Police Department for over 26 years since his graduation from the Academy in 1998.  He promoted to the rank of Sergeant with just four years of seniority (before the rules were changed) in 2002.  Bryan scored #1 on both the 2006 lieutenant's written promotional exam and the 2009 captain's written promotional exam.  He was promoted to the rank of Captain with only 11 years seniority, making him one of the youngest captains in the history of HPD.  As a captain/commander, Bryan was assigned to the Kingwood Division, Special Operations Division, Training Division, Central Division, Auto Theft Division, Mental Health Division, and Narcotics Division.  While serving as a Commander, Bryan obtained his Law Degree from South Texas College of Law-Houston, graduating as the class valedictorian.  After retirement, Bryan has founded Texas Blue Law Firm, PLLC with Retired Sergeant Mike Loessin.  Texas Blue Law provides subscription-based legal services for law enforcement, firefighters, and other public safety employees.

We are currently updating questions to reflect changes to General Orders, and hope to launch the updated material along with all of the more than 2,600 questions on April 1st.  Stay tuned.....

​With the books announced and the cut-off date set, I have updated the General Orders tests (both Sergeant and Lieutenant) for the cut-off date of June 19, 2020. This means the new 400-26, 600-01, 600-17, and 600-20 will be on the sergeant's test (and almost certainly the lieutenant's test as well). Please take a close look at the questions over the next few days and let me know if you see something out of place. Remember that only newly-generated tests will be updated; if you resume an old test, it will be the questions exactly as they stood when you generated it.

For those of you taking the sergeant's exam, it's time to really buckle down. This is going to be the most difficult test in a very long time - not necessarily because of the difficulty of the questions, but the sheer size of the material. Previous years have been a total of 1,500 pages, most of which was the General Orders. This year, however, you'll be reading in excess of 2,400 pages, and it's going to be completely, unbearably dry. The books were also really, really expensive! If you didn't order them immediately, you may have to wait a little while before they're back in stock. If you don't have a copy of the books on the way, I recommend finding them from somewhere rather than waiting. 

I'm going to start writing questions as soon as I get my copies of the books. The good thing (for those taking the sergeant's test) is that I'm certain I'll be able to get a lot of questions out of the textbooks, making it a very high value for $100. The bad thing is that you'll need to know everything. Once I've got my copy, I'll let you know how I recommend to break it down into five parts. It may be very difficult to read the book six times, but we won't know that until we've got a copy in hand. Don't fall into the trap of assuming that other people will not read that much material. If you want to succeed and promote, you are going to have to force this material down, as many times as possible.