Maura Healey is poised to achieve folk hero status in Lawrence due to one of her most significant acts during her time as Attorney General. She has asked that the Civil Service hiring practices be changed in Lawrence for the fire and police departments. Currently the city is bound by the 1972 Castro v Beecher federal consent decree. To understand how truly monumental this is we must really understand the racial make-up of the city and how the hiring process works under the consent decree.
Lawrence, as of 2014, was made up of 83% minority (this data includes all non-white residents) and 17% white residents. The department is approximately 75% white and 25% minority. Officers with the rank of lieutenant or above are 100% white. Yet the consent decree prevents the city from rectifying this problem and is currently unable to hire the highest scoring police officer candidates or allow the City to request a minority list or an all-female list.
Lawrence Police Chief James Fitzpatrick said, “I believe it is important for a police department to mirror its community. The current system makes attaining that difficult if not impossible. Diversity is very important in every industry but no more so than in a police department where trust is the foundation. Trust comes from a familiar face, someone you grew up with, someone you went to school with, someone with the same experiences. The expectation is that the best people from the community are the communities’ police officers. I am confident that the new system will achieve the diversity that the department needs while maintaining the highest recruitment standards.”
The overwhelming number of city residents that received high scores on the police officer exam, are minorities and city residents. They are routinely bypassed because of the consent decree. Civil Service’s own policy states, “Requests for exemption based solely on a change in population figures will not be approved by Counsel for the Plaintiffs and should not be submitted,” and does not allow the highest scoring candidates an opportunity for consideration for the job.
The decree says that the city must consider three white candidates for the position of police officer, for example, and one minority. This happens even if nearly all of the highest scoring candidates are minorities. The chart reflects this hiring practice. Even though eighty-five percent of the candidates are minorities, only eight percent of the minority candidates will have the chance to be hired. White candidates have a one hundred percent chance to be hired. The consent decree that at one time assisted minority candidates, who make up the majority of the city, and want a career as a fire fighter or police officer. It is even more unbelievable, that as a residency priority city, more and more non-minorities from other cities are inserted into the Police and Fire list just to maintain the consent decree.
Withdrawing from the consent decree will greatly increase opportunity for minority residents. It will do so without depriving whites the same opportunity. The Civil Service exam and list will be competitive and appointments made based on merit. City Personnel Director, Frank Bonet, has been studying the consent decree since 2004 and he was one of the first to raise the issue to elected officials and civil service administrators. He and Mayor Rivera began to educate the Human Resources Division administrators to the injustice of the consent as it relates to Lawrence and have been advocating for change since early 2014.
The change would allow the Human Resources Commission to produce two list in which will provide Lawrence the list with the highest number of minorities. Still it will not allow the city to consider the highest scoring candidates from the Civil Service list. In fact, more of our sons and daughters will have an opportunity to become police officers and fire fighters in the city where they grew up and still live.
Chief Fitzpatrick agrees when he says, “The majority of the officers currently on the police force were born and raised in the city like myself. We have all seen the demographic changes that the newer generations of immigrants have brought to the city. Our own parents and grandparents were immigrants. The police officers understand that it is time for the new generation to have the same opportunities we have had.”
The Attorney General has taken a pro-active, common sense approach to this issue. She is working to provide an opportunity for Lawrence to build police and fire departments that more closely reflect the demographic composition of the city.
