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Once again, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the Pittsburgh Police — this time over hiring practices that allegedly discriminate against blacks. As ACLU attorney Vic Walczak noted during an Aug. 23 press conference, one quarter of the city’s residents are black, but fewer than 4 percent of officers hired over the past decade have been. “That in and of itself should tell you something’s wrong,” Walczak argued.
Yet the ACLU’s complaint makes the bureau sound less like the Ku Klux Klan … and more like the Keystone Kops.
For example, the suit contends that preferred candidates — those with family or other personal ties to the force — sometimes receive answers to oral exams in advance. In fact, it alleges, during the test, some “nervous candidates accurately provided answers to [questions] that had not been provided yet.” During the physical test, meanwhile, favored candidates get credit for “sit-ups that … did not meet the applicable standard” and during footraces, test administrators “run along with and encourage” them.
“At every step in the process,” Walczak claimed last week, “there is some kind of shenanigan going on.”
The city, in turn, has heaped derision on the ACLU. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, for one, jibed that Walczak must be looking to build an addition to his home. Officials have also criticized the two named plaintiffs, James Foster and Mike Sharp. Sharp, they say, acknowledged smoking pot at least 800 times, while Foster had multiple moving violations and bad employment references. (Both Sharp and Foster deny those claims.)
“I don’t want to talk bad about anybody,” city personnel director Judy Hill Finegan says. “But they sued us. … And it appears to me that some people need to reflect on themselves and whether they are appropriate candidates for this job.”
And for me, at least one part of the ACLU complaint doesn’t pass the smell test. It asserts that the “chief’s roundtable” — in which top brass make the final call on whom to hire — often makes decisions based on “cronyism” rather than “objective criteria.” But police Chief Nate Harper himself is black, and no one’s suggesting he opposes diversity. So why wouldn’t the roundtable arbitrarily favor black candidates?
(The complaint asserts that roundtable participants “decide by vote” who to hire. Finegan denies that: “It’s the chief’s pick.”)
But the city hasn’t always made the best case for itself, either. Days before the ACLU suit, the city announced its newest assistant police chief would be George Trosky, who made national news in 1989, when he was filmed apparently beating up a Grateful Dead fan. He was also accused of domestic violence, though the charges were later dropped.
By all accounts, Trosky has been a skilled commander who made the best of his second chance. Even so, that’s two more chances than Foster and Sharp got. No wonder they’re aggrieved — especially given a lack of diversity the city itself acknowledges.
“We’re not where we need to be,” Finegan says. “But we are making progress.” The city has sought to broaden the pool of applicants for police bureau jobs, she notes: “We’ve worked with community-based organizations, religious groups,” to find potential applicants, while also seeking candidates from other states.
Even Walczak lauded those efforts. But if allegations of favoritism prove true, it could mean that hiring police from Florida may not solve problems in our own back yard.
After all, this isn’t the first time a lack of diversity has generated headlines. Back in 2000, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that only two officers out of a class of 36 were black. (By comparison, in a class whose diversity Ravenstahl trumpeted last week, two out 41 recruits were black.) Under then-mayor Tom Murphy, the paper reported, “the city has been working … with community groups, churches and other organizations” to find more black recruits.
Ravenstahl expanded those efforts by, for example, providing test-preparation for exams. Still, I can think of only one period in recent memory when there weren’t complaints about a lack of diversity: between 1975 and 1991, when a federal court order mandated equal hiring of black and female officers.
And that may be the only solution that works. Good intentions are important. But as every cop knows, sometimes to gain control of a situation, you have to use force.
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 4, 2012.
I didn’t expect that twist at the end where the author suggests the city hire by diversity instead of the best candidate. I’m not sure about anyone else, but when I or my family needs help I want the smartest, strongest, fastest possible person and I don’t care what color they are. If they are the best for the job to keep us safe they could have purple polka dots for all I care.
Can’t we find ways to support Chief Harper and his officers who bravely face the worst of society and here’s a thought – not care about race for awhile?
Chris, you write: ” But police Chief Nate Harper himself is black, and no one’s suggesting he opposes diversity. So why wouldn’t the roundtable arbitrarily favor black candidates?”
It seems likely that the Chief faces accusations of reverse racism all the time within his sphere of influence – surely his own vested interests lay in leaning opposite of such expectations. And I will not read motives in a man whose professional history and character I haven’t studied closely, but internalized and reverse racism is a standard feature in racist systems, which often reward cooperative tokens as a form of self-defensive PR. Harper would surely not be lonely in the crowds of such tokens that have used “neutrality” as a shield to defend their shaky authority within a clearly racist system.
Helen Gerhardt
“MLK fan” – Some people might have the luxury of “not caring about race for a while” and of being comfortable relying for their safety and security on what is again rapidly becoming a white male police force. Others have good reason to feel very differently. Like you I also want the best, most capable, most qualified police force a city can put together. To me it’s clear that is a diverse force, because with deep diversity it’s less likely that assumptions and prejudices common to people of any single background take root. All of us are always smarter and better than just a few of us.
Where I differ with the author is his suspicion that the old rigid quota system of the consent decree may be the only kind of solution. I sure hope it’s not. I have to admit it seems almost laughably ham-fisted, ideal for generating resentment, and constitutionally problematic. I suspect the best and perhaps only real solution is to secure leadership that “gets” the value of diversity and “gets” that it is a high, high, extraordinarily high priority.
Just to be clear: While I wonder if a 1970s-style quota system may be the only way to ensure diversity, I don’t expect it to happen. The legal landscape, and public attitudes, have shifted too much since then. But I also have doubts that an attitude adjustment is a sufficient solution either. We’ve now had a two-decade-long experiment — under multiple mayoral administrations — in what happens without outside supervision. Over those years, many of the folks in authority did, I believe, sincerely value diversity. They capitalized on the decree’s heavy lifting by promoting from within. They doubled down on outreach efforts. Yet when it comes to recruitment, and thus the LONG-TERM prospects for diversity on the force, the results haven’t been encouraging.
This can’t just be about having more Black cops. Some neighborhoods have been known to be “unsafe” for decades and the police response seems only to arrest and arrest, costing taxpayers huge amounts for the court system, jails, and the occasional lawsuit, with no discernible improvement. This is grossly unfair to the families who have to live in these conditions and are paying taxes for police protection. It is unfair to the people who are arrested for “looking suspicious” and their families who pay with disrupted lives and careers. It is unfair to the police who appear to be helpless and hapless. I don’t think it is a matter of the police doing things wrong, but doing the wrong things – which is a political decision and not made by the cops themselves. It would certainly be beneficial to have a more diverse police force. There is evidence that having a more diverse workforce does not lead to favoritism for the formerly excluded group but to generally more equitable outcomes. That would be better, but we won’t really be a world-class city until we determine to have a city made up entirely of safe neighborhoods.
Likewise to be clear, I meant leadership not simply from the mayor but within and through the “brass” of the police department. That might mean a certain amount of housecleaning, I don’ t know. It’ll be interesting to test the strength of the ACLU’s evidence it has previewed.