Changes in police hiring weighed
O'Toole eyes shift from test scores
In the aftermath of a federal court ruling overturning Boston's 30-year-old quota system, Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole said she is eyeing radical changes in police hiring that may include eliminating the civil service exam or making it pass-fail.
O'Toole told the Globe she wants to shift from the city's heavy reliance on the test, which favors white applicants, to focus on more subjective factors, such as background, training, and foreign language skills that would allow the city to hire minority police officers.
''I'm not enamored of the current system," O'Toole said. ''I'm not convinced that test scores are the best indicator."
But a new system should be designed to prevent favoritism, she said. ''Whatever we end up with has to be fair and attract the best candidates. We can't go to a purely political process."
O'Toole said she is considering two other changes: a revision in the law that gives veterans preference in hiring, which critics say often favors white applicants in Massachusetts, and heavier use of the police cadet program, once a bastion of whites, to attract and train minority applicants.
The commissioner's proposals, some of which would require legislative approval, are the first to surface as Boston contemplates an era without the 1974 federal consent decrees ordering the city's police and fire departments to hire more members of minority groups.
In September, 41 percent of Boston's 1,344 patrolmen were minority members, but O'Toole said she wants to avoid backsliding.
''A police department needs to reflect the community it serves," she said. ''This is a different Boston. We need a department that is ethnically and racially diverse."
Last week, US District Judge Patti B. Saris ordered the Police Department to scrap its longtime practice of hiring one minority applicant for each white, ruling that the department has enough minority members among its patrolmen. A similar ruling last year by a federal appeals court found that the Boston Fire Department had achieved racial balance among its firefighters and must abandon its affirmative action plan.
Both departments could now simply choose applicants based on their scores on the statewide civil service tests.
But O'Toole and lawyers on both sides acknowledge that hiring strictly by test scores would probably produce a work force that will, over time, revert to predominantly white members. Fewer minorities take the test, and those who take the test generally don't score as well as whites, records have shown.
Under the quota system, white and minority applicants are listed according to test scores. The city hires one minority member for every white applicant. But since minorities usually scored lower on the test, many white applicants with higher, often perfect, scores were passed over in favor of lower-scoring members of minority groups.
A Globe analysis of Boston Police Department hiring in 2003 showed that minority applicants needed to score 97 or better to be hired. Hundreds of white applicants scored higher than 97 but were bypassed.
According to the state's Human Resources Division, which oversees civil service, only two minority members would have been hired for the October 2003 class if the department had chosen strictly by test score.
Harold Lichten, the lawyer who sued the city on behalf of eight white applicants for patrolman, said officials should consider a banding plan adopted by several other cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, and Bridgeport, Conn. This plan, which has been ruled constitutional by other courts, allows officials to combine into one group applicants with close test scores and hire anyone from that group.
In recent affirmative action rulings, the US Supreme Court and other federal courts have said that although quotas are unconstitutional, race cannot be the only factor in hiring and college admissions.
Under a banding plan, ''you would take everyone within a certain range and then have an interview process," Lichten said. ''You would look for the best candidate based on suitable experience and background. If you gave race and veteran's status consideration, versus an absolute preference, you'd get a system that is both constitutionally permissible and will get you more minorities in the mix."
Banding would require a change in the civil service law or a court order, Lichten said.
In her ruling, Saris said banding makes sense because minimal differences in test scores may be meaningless to city officials.
O'Toole said test scores are often so close that banding could require officials to consider hundreds of applicants for one class of recruits.
She is looking instead to a model like that used by the Connecticut State Police, which requires applicants to pass a standardized test and then undergo a rigorous process that includes an interview, physical test, and psychiatric screening.
''We're not saying we get perfect candidates, but we weed out a lot of people that way," said Trooper William Tate of the Connecticut State Police. ''It's hard to get on the job. It takes six or seven months."
The city should create a commission to craft solutions, which should include the elimination of civil service, said Leonard Alkins, president of the Boston branch of the NAACP. ''It has outlived its usefulness and tends to feed into the disparities that we've faced.
''With unions we have today, why do we need civil service?" he said, referring to unions' traditional protection of workers faced with unfair hiring and employment practices.
Absolute veterans' preferences should be eliminated, Alkins said. ''Those preferences have always been the major problem in hiring as opposed to affirmative action. People have never wanted to admit it. Those preferences were put in place by the Legislature as the white person's affirmative action plan."
Though the military is considered one of the most diverse employers in the United States, Alkins argued that Massachusetts military veterans traditionally have tended to be white, though he conceded ''there may be more [minorities] now because of the education benefits."
He said the city should have fought to retain the affirmative action plan, which he believes is still necessary because of lingering racism.
''Just because 30 years have come and gone doesn't necessarily mean there is no need for it," he said. The NAACP is an intervenor in the case and filed the original lawsuit in the early 1970s.
As for the men who successfully sued the city, they're hoping to be rewarded with jobs, even though they are not guaranteed them. Only one, Paul DeLeo Jr., scored so high, 101, that he would have been hired if the affirmative action plan had not been in effect when he applied. DeLeo scored 100 on the test and received another point because he was on the Newton police force.
The others, even though they received 100s, came in behind several white applicants who had veterans' preferences. Those veterans may now be eligible for jobs instead of the plaintiffs in the case. Customarily, the city conducts a lottery if several prospective employees get identical scores.
One of the plaintiffs, Christopher Carr, an investigator for the Suffolk district attorney's office and the son of a veteran Boston police detective, is hoping that the department reaches out to him and others who have been trying to get onto the force for years.
''Growing up with my dad being a police officer, that's the only thing I've ever wanted to do," said Carr, 26. ''It meant everything. I want the job, and I'm jealous of the guys who have the job, that they get to put on that uniform every day.
''I'm not here to make a statement," he added. ''I'm just here to say that I believe I deserved a shot at the police academy, because I had scored a perfect score."
Stephanie Ebbert of the Globe staff contributed to this report. 