Panel says white officers deserved
promotions
By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff, 12/18/98
n another blow to the city's affirmative action
efforts, the state Civil
Service Commission ruled this week that six white
Boston police
officers were unfairly denied promotions because of
their race and should
be bumped to the top of the list for higher rank.
The Boston Police Department, according to the order
filed this week,
relied on an outdated 1980 federal consent decree when
it promoted
minority officers over white officers who scored higher
on the civil service
exam for positions of sergeant and lieutenant.
''What this means is that there has been a system in
place for the
appointment and promotion of minority officers which
everyone agrees
has been a tremendous beneficial experiment for the city
and the
department, but the original premise of real
discrimination in the late
1960s and 1970s addressed by the consent decree is now
over,'' said
Christopher Muse, the lawyer for the police union.
The ruling is the latest in a run of setbacks for city
affirmative action
programs. Last month, a federal court ruled that Boston
public schools'
use of race in determining admission to its three exam
schools was
unconstitutional.
Last year, a longstanding affirmative action program at
the city's most
prestigious public school, the Boston Latin School, was
scrapped after a
legal challenge.
Police officials are reviewing the Civil Service
Commission's findings and
are likely to appeal the ruling, said Mary Jo Harris,
legal adviser for the
department. ''What we are saying is that the consent
decree was only one
authority upon which we were relying on when making the
promotions,''
Harris said.
She said the department was following federal guidelines
that allow
flexibility in promotions in workforces where there has
been past
discrimination.
''Our position was when our promotions would have an
adverse effect on
minority officers, then we are permitted to and may even
be required
under federal law to level the playing field for those
minority officers,''
Harris said. ''We don't believe the Civil Service
Commission adequately
addressed that interest in the decision.''
The consent decree was approved by US District Court in
Massachusetts in 1980, but the civil service ruling said
the decree expired
in April 1995. The six officers involved in this week's
decision came up
for promotion in September and January 1996.
Meanwhile, the commission rejected the complaints of six
other white
officers who received the same scores as the minority
officers who were
promoted ahead of them, saying the department had the
right to choose
anyone based on their equal credentials.
At City Hall yesterday, reaction to the decision was
mixed.
''I think this is another major step in the objective of
Boston being a
color-blind city, where people are not hired, fired or
promoted based on
race, or children are not assigned to schools based on
race,'' said City
Council President James M. Kelly (South Boston), who
initiated a public
hearing in October to examine a 1974 consent decree for
entry-level
officers.
Kelly contends that the decree unfairly bypassed
high-scoring white
officers for low-scoring minority officers.
But Councilor Charles C. Yancey (Dorchester) said he
worries the
decision will curb the city's progress toward racial
diversity. Yancey said
the police department still has a long way to go before
minorities are on
an equal footing with whites, saying that white men
still dominate the
highest-paying positions in the department.
''I am very concerned that this may in fact turn the
clock back in terms of
diversity in all levels of the police department,'' he
said.
This story ran on page B01 of the Boston Globe on
12/18/98.
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