Mayor & State agree on need for Spanish Language officers
Mayor Daniel Rivera announced that upon his request and working with the City’s Personnel Office, the Human Resources Division of the Executive Office for Administration and Finance has granted his request to hire the next 7 Lawrence police officers from a civil service list made up of only Spanish speaking candidates.
Lawrence is under the Castro Consent Decree. Municipalities under the Castro Consent Decree receive Civil Service lists for hiring with a set goal of hiring people of color. Since Lawrence has such a limited English population, qualified, diverse Civil Service candidates with Spanish speaking skills were being passed over on the list to meet the 1 person of color to 3 Caucasian civil service list mandated by the Castro Consent Decree. The City of Lawrence was granted the use of a PAR .08 Selective Certification Bilingual of the Civil Service law to pick the next 7 hires from a Civil Service list of all Spanish speaking candidates. All candidates must first pass the Civil Service exam and then will have to pass a rigorous psychological and a physical aptitude test along with a thorough background screening.
“This is great, we have been working on this since week one! The current situation hurts our efforts to create a Police Department and better serve the community. If we are going to avoid the problems of Ferguson, MO with the death of Michael Brown; and Baltimore, MD with the death of Freddie Grey; and New York, NY with the death of Eric Garner, and Waller County, TX and the death Sandra Bland we cannot continue to hire in the same manner,” said Mayor Rivera. “I am thankful that the Human Recourses Division Executive Office for Administration and Finance, the Attorney General’s Office, the NAACP – New England Area Conference along with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice for their hard work in helping us navigate the issues, and for their understanding on how important this was for public safety in Lawrence.”
“Having the ability to use a Civil Service list to fill the next 7 slots with Spanish speakers will help us in creating a tighter bond with the community. Our department is based on a community policing model and this will allow us to get closer to the people we serve. This is not about quotas, it’s about common sense. When almost half of your population is Spanish speaking and/or limited English you want to insure that the men and women of the department reflect that,” said Chief James X. Fitzpatrick.
