Thomas Breen Photo
Chief Dominguez (with Mayor Elicker): Expects one or two more slots to open up by year’s end.
New promotions list.
A list of results from a civil-service test released Wednesday complicates efforts to diversify the department’s top ranks, as white candidates landed in the top eight slots.
But time might ease the path to a solution.
The results were from a test for the position of police lieutenant.
Twenty-one cops took the test, which had a written and an oral-interview component. All passed. The list released Wednesday ranks the candidates by final combined score.
The Civil Service Commission voted unanimously during a meeting over Zoom Wednesday to approve the list. The list will remain in effect for a year; promotions can be made during that time from that list.
The list is printed above.
The department currently has nine lieutenant positions open.
Meanwhile it is wrestling with a disappearance this year of cops of color from the upper ranks. Because of a series of promotions and departures in 2021, the department now has no Black cops serving as either chief, assistant chief, captain, or lieutenant, or district manager for the first time since 1993. It has one Latino lieutenant. (Read about that here.) An estimated 31 percent of the city population is Black, 31 percent Hispanic, and 29.5 percent white non-Hispanic.
Current NHPD racial make-up.
This lieutenant test was looked upon as a way to start replenishing upper ranks with a more diverse group of cops.
But now that will depend on how officers are chosen for the promotion.
Eight of the nine top finishers were white. The ninth finisher is Black, the tenth, Black, and the 11th, Latina.
Current Sgt. Derek Werner topped the list with a score of 89.88.
The police chief recommends cops for promotion to the Board of Police of Commissioners, which makes the final decision.
Promotions (like the recent ones for captain) are often made straight down in order of final test scores. That avoids potential lawsuits from higher-scoring cops passed over; and it avoid criticism that the department did not choose to promote officers based on who is most qualified.
If promotions are made based straight down the list of result rankings, eight of the nine cops promoted to lieutenant will be white.
The city has faced such lawsuits before. It has also faced lawsuits when it goes straight down the line and ends up with a monochromatic or near-monochromatic set of promotions.
Sometimes promotions are made by the “rule of three,” under which any of three top-scoring candidates up for a position can be chosen. The argument there is that fractional decimal-point differences in test results do not reflect who is truly most qualified for a position, especially given the subjective natures of oral interviews and their possible failure to take into account some of the skills that make for superlative policing. In the view of some critics, conscious or unconscious biases can also affect written questions or judgements made in scoring oral interviews.
Either way, Interim Chief Renee Dominguez and the police commissioners will be under pressure.
A group of Black clergy leaders recently held a press conference calling on the commissioner to use the rule of three to ensure a diverse cast of lieutenants. They conveyed complaints expressed by candidates of color about what they considered unfair treatment in the process. Officials disagreed with that allegation. (Read about that here.) They did not argue that criminals will commit more crimes if the force lacks officers and detectives and supervisors of color (although critics characterized their argument that way). Rather, they argued that the community will come forward less with information needed to solve crimes, police-community trust is weakened, decisions are made without the benefit of a broad community-connected perspective, and officers of color see little hope of advancement through the ranks.
“I do plan to present the top nine” in order, Dominguez told the Independent Wednesday.
She added that a current lieutenant plans to retire this year, opening up a tenth slot; and that another may as well. In that case, she would continue going down the list — meaning an additional Black officer as well as a Latina officer would be up for promotion.
“I’m comfortable either way,” commission Chair Evelise Ribeiro told the Independent Wednesday. “I’m comfortable with the rule of three. We have used it before with the police commission. It’s a discussion I will need to have with the other commissioners in regards with their thoughts. I do believe that there should be diversity in the ranks. I do believe there should be diversity in leadership. That is something the commission and the chief will work to do. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. The rule of three is something the commissioners have the authority to do.”
Members of the Civil Service Commission did not hold hold any discussion before voting at Wednesday’s meeting to approve the new civil service list for lieutenant promotions.
They did hear a report first from city Personnel Director Noelia Marcano.
Marcano said 19 males took the test, and two females. Fourteen of the test-takers were white, five Black, two Latinx. A firm called Morris & McDaniel conducted the exams. It enlisted six evaluators, cops from other departments with the rank of captain or higher. Two of the evaluators were white, two Black, two Hispanic. Four were male, two female.
One test-taker exercised the right to ask for a review of his oral interview evaluation. Morris & McDaniels “reconvened a panel from the original assessors,” Marcano said at Wednesday’s meeting. “After a thorough review,” the panel concluded that “the exercise he was appealing was reasonable. Therefore, no changes were made.”
One way to increase diversity in the NHFD and the NHPD is to increase/develop junior high and high school introductory classes to encourage NHPS students to consider firefighter, EMT, paramedic and law enforcement careers after high school.
If every student was given an intro course in their last year of junior high, and then given an option to take classes focused on training for those careers in high school with a preference added to their potential hiring into those departments in the city, then you would not only increase the diversity of applicants, you would increase their scores on the tests when they apply.