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December 2, 2004

Court rules against police hiring policy

Jeremy Schwab

 

Last week, U.S. District Judge Patti B. Saris ordered the Boston Police Department to nix its 30-year-old affirmative action hiring policy, raising doubts about whether the force will remain diverse in the future.

In her ruling, Saris found that the police department has achieved racial balance among patrolmen, 41 percent of whom are people of color in a city that is 50.5 percent non-white. A similar ruling struck down the fire department’s one-to-one hiring policy last year.

But the police department remains overwhelmingly white at most ranks above patrolman.

Critics of the ruling said they would contemplate a court challenge but in the meantime hoped to work with Police Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole to come up with a plan to keep the department from becoming less diverse.

“We would expect and hope the commissioner will be reaching out to us to let us know there is a spirit of cooperation and willingness to work with the NAACP,” said NAACP Boston Branch President Leonard Alkins. Alkins said Monday that O’Toole had not contacted the NAACP since last week’s ruling.

Proponents of diversity warn that unless the department modifies, eliminates or de-prioritizes the state civil service exam in its hiring process, the overwhelming majority of new hires will be white.

Fewer people of color take the exam, and those who do tend to score lower than whites.

Under the affirmative action policy, this disparity did not hurt applicants of color. The department hired one applicant of color for every white applicant, based on who had the highest test scores in their racial category.

If the affirmative action policy had not been in place last year, however, just two applicants of color would have been hired, according to a Boston Globe analysis.

The score disparity does not mean, however, that applicants of color score poorly on the exam. Those officers of color who were hired last year scored a 97 or higher out of a possible 100, pointing to a perceived flaw in the test — hundreds of applicants score perfect or near-perfect, making it hard to differentiate among them.

Some say the exam has another flaw — it is culturally biased toward whites.

“The questions tend to deal with cultural mannerisms in how white people are raised, in so far as problem solving,” said Alkins. “That really showed a bias, because black people and people of color could not identify with that manner of problem-solving.”

O’Toole said she would consider eliminating the exam or making it pass-fail. She told the Boston Globe she wants to focus more on factors such as training, background and foreign language skills and supports increasing outreach to communities of color in cadet recruitment. O’Toole said she would also consider revising the veterans’ preference.

The department hires disabled veterans regardless of their test scores, as long as they meet other requirements. This veterans’ preference and a preference for children of officers killed in the line of duty trump the affirmative action preference in the hiring process.

Critics of the preferences note that most of those hired under them are white.

“We are not the ones taking jobs from white individuals who [although] they scored 100 or 101 are being denied jobs,” said Alkins. “Individuals who scored 70, because they fall into the protected classes, they are the ones taking the jobs.”

 

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