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| NEWS > 02 April 2007 |
Other related articles:
Culture of mistrust behind Seattle PD's woes
from then-Chief Gil Kerlikowske or the department's union leaders: Other cities have it worse.
"We have a squeaky-clean Police Department compared to other big cities," Sgt. Rich O'Neill, president of the Seattle Police Officers' Guild, said when the department was under scrutiny in 2007 and 2008 over its use of force.
O'Neill said many of the complaints investigated by the department's internal-investigation unit "would be met with a dial tone if you called another big-city department."
Three years later, the U.S. Justice Department has come calling.
In Mar... Read more
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 Article sourced from
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Fairview Observer - Fairview,T
02 April 2007
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
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Metropolitan Nashville Police
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White officers say Metro Nashv
Metro police Sgt. William Johnson felt in his bones that a promotion was just around the corner.
A Metro officer since 1996, he served on the police SWAT team, taught at the Metro police academy and even worked as a field-training officer, helping young recruits learn the tricks of the trade.
After scoring ninth among 56 sergeants who took written and oral tests, he figured he was a slam-dunk to win one of the 11 open lieutenant slots.
In past years, he would have been.
But last year, Metro changed its system for promoting police officers to increase the number of minorities in the department's upper ranks. Before the change — when only test scores were considered — it had been eight years since a minority had been elevated to Metro police lieutenant.
Last year, after the change, two black sergeants made lieutenant.
The new policy means that some sergeants, like Johnson, who is white, are passed over for promotion despite having higher test scores.
Johnson is one of three officers scheduled to meet with the department's top brass Tuesday to discuss the promotion process.
"I was dumbfounded when I was passed over," said Johnson, whose only disciplinary blemish is an oral reprimand for being late to a meeting years ago.
"This is about my name, my integrity. And to have performed as well as I did, it's embarrassing to me.
"I have been in law enforcement for 20 years, and (this) has been the most humiliating and embarrassing thing I have ever experienced."
Diversity plays role
In the past, Metro police promotions were based strictly on how well an officer performed on the oral and written tests.
Last year, Chief Ronal Serpas sought and got a new policy that allowed department officials discretion to promote from a group of top-scoring candidates.
Instead of strictly following test-score rankings, the chief examined each candidate's work history and asked all the department's deputy chiefs and captains about their work in the field.
"You're looking for the person that you believe will make the best supervisor," police spokesman Don Aaron said.
"Test scores are important, but work history, work ethic, evaluations, evaluation by peers are all important as well. And you're looking at the totality of circumstances."
And given the under-representation of women and minorities in the department's supervisory ranks, the need for diversity is a factor, Aaron said."If you have two candidates who are essentially equal and believe that both would make very good supervisors, and if your choice is to make the department more diverse, you would probably elect to include diversity in your choice," the spokesman said.
Results anger union
Critics of the old system complained that the tests were not entirely objective measures. The oral test, a videotaped interview scored by officers from outside of the department, was vulnerable to biases of the evaluators, some said.
Under the old system, only four of the 45 Metro officers promoted higher than the rank of sergeant since 2000 are minorities. None of the 33 officers promoted from sergeant to lieutenant during that time were people of color.
"There were a lot of qualified officers who were not promoted ... because they didn't score high enough on tests, but they were more than qualified to be promoted," said detective Reggie Miller, head of the Black Police Association in Nashville. "It was time for a change in the promotional system. ... The old system wasn't working."
Two black sergeants promoted Sept. 29 scored 15th and 16th out of 56 candidates. Under the old rules, they would not have become lieutenants.
The local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union that represents Metro officers, lost a court battle last year to try to stop the policy change.
The results so far have only hardened the union's stance against the new system.
"It causes dissension in the ranks and mistrust, and it gives the appearance of impropriety and favoritism," said Jack Byrd, the union's attorney.
"That affects the morale in the department, which in turn affects the community."
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