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With court-ordered hiring rules to expire, group warns of 'backsliding' on police, fire diversity

Officers at a police graduation ceremony on June 16, 2022, with Mayor Domenic Sarno and Police Superintendent Cheryl Clapprood (right) looking on.
City of Springfield
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Officers at a police graduation ceremony on June 16, 2022, with Mayor Domenic Sarno and Police Superintendent Cheryl Clapprood (right) looking on.

After a half century in effect, a court order that controlled hiring in some Massachusetts police and fire departments is set to expire.

The federal consent decree aimed to boost the ranks of Black and Latino police officers and firefighters in more than 100 cities and towns. It included Springfield until a few years ago, and Holyoke will be released from the requirements at the end of this year.

A recently released report said the effort has been largely successful. The report comes from the Brattle Group and was commissioned by Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based group that's warned about the dangers of prematurely ending the rules.

We were joined by Oren Sellstrom, litigation director at Lawyers for Civil Rights.

Kari Njiiri, NEPM: Since the 1970s, the consent decree has directed state human resources officials to follow hiring ratios in these police and fire departments intended to prioritize Black and Latino candidates. Historically, these departments were mostly white and non-Hispanic, while serving increasingly diverse communities, and that undermined public trust. To what extent has the consent decree worked?

Oren Sellstrom, Lawyers for Civil Rights: Well, that's a great question. And that's precisely why we commissioned the Brattle Group to do this report for us. And what the report showed was that the progress has been dramatic over time.

But what the report also shows is that we need to keep our eyes on the prize and not let backsliding occur. Once jurisdictions are released from the consent decree and no longer have that judicial oversight, there is a real risk that the gains that we saw in diversity in public safety agencies will vanish. And so we really need to look to the future, once the consent decrees have ended at the end of this year, to really make sure that those gains are preserved and are built upon going forward to the future.

We should note that in Holyoke, parity between the available workforce and the police and fire ranks has not yet been reached. But the court is releasing the city from these rules anyway. You opposed this. Why did the court proceed?

Over time, cities and towns could petition the court to be released from judicial oversight if they could show that the percentage of Black and Latino police or firefighters roughly matched the population of the city or town.

And so that has happened for almost all jurisdictions, and the very few that remain are now approaching parity. For that reason, the court determined that it was time to sunset — or end — the consent decrees. And so that will happen at the end of this year.

There are jurisdictions like Holyoke that have not quite met that parity benchmark, and there are others that were released from the consent decree, but now risk that backsliding that I referenced.

Why, in your estimation, did it take so long to reach parity?

The hiring system that existed, starting back in the 1970s, for police and firefighters was deeply entrenched in many jurisdictions. And so, it takes a concerted effort and it takes time to diversify police departments.

Those are ongoing processes. You have to look both at the initial level of recruitment, the application process, but also promotion and retention. So at every level of the way, in order to really have the kind of diversity that we need in public safety agencies, it takes a concerted effort and it takes time and monitoring.

Springfield's police department, for the first time in its history, now has a Black leader, superintendent Lawrence Akers. But overall, police supervisor ranks remain disproportionately white, and this consent decree only focused on entry-level hiring. What's being done to address the disparity at the supervisor level?

That is a great question. And we really do need to focus on diversity at all levels, because the promotional ladder is also often, in many cases, closed to employees of color. There are many ways in which promotions can exclude qualified candidates of color, where processes are based on an inside track of who knows who.

There have been [court] challenges to the promotional exams that have been successful. And so, even though there are public safety agencies where, as a whole, the workforce may reflect the population of the city, we really need to look at all of the different levels, including particularly the supervisory levels, to make sure that diversity is infused throughout public safety agencies.

So what happens after the consent decree? Is race able to be used as a factor at all in the hiring of police officers and firefighters?

There are many different ways that local police and fire departments can look to maintain and increase the diversity in their forces, and the Brattle report points out a number that have been successful, or at least have shown signs of promise.

For example, there are cadet programs — both boston Police Department and Boston Fire Department — which is an alternative pathway to get entry-level police and fire officers. And with aggressive recruitment in communities of color, this alternative pathway shows signs of diversifying the police and fire departments in Boston. So that's a model that can be looked at.

There are also a number of cities and towns that look to language certifications. This is where, if you have a police or fire applicant that speaks a language other than English, that can be given consideration in the hiring process. That's critically important for both police and fire departments. For example, to have a Spanish-speaking police officer who can interview victims or witnesses of crimes, or a Haitian Creole-speaking firefighter who can get urgent information from a family at the scene of a fire. So by getting the state's approval to consider that skill favorably in the hiring process, cities and towns not only strengthen their departments, but diversify them as well.

So those are just a few of many steps that cities and towns can take to increase and maintain diversity in their public safety agencies.

And we should note that the Springfield Police Department is under a separate federal consent decree imposed just a few years ago, that relates to police misconduct. That court order remains in effect.

Kari Njiiri is a senior reporter and longtime host and producer of "Jazz Safari," a musical journey through the jazz world and beyond, broadcast Saturday nights on NEPM Radio. He's also the local host of NPR’s "All Things Considered."
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