Melissa Bailey Photo
Plaintiffs leave the courthouse Monday.
Outside the courtroom, a lawyer representing disgruntled cops in a discrimination lawsuit made a counter-offer in the hallway. The city didn’t bite.
The negotiation took place Monday in the hallway outside Courtroom 5E in Superior Court on Church Street.
A dozen cops and their supporters showed up there to try to get a state judge to block the city from hiring more sergeants.
The plaintiffs are the New Haven 10, Bruce Bonner and nine fellow African-American cops who passed a sergeant’s exam in April 2009 and never got promoted. They’re suing the city for allegedly discriminating against them when the Civil Service Commission certified the eligibility list for only one year, instead of two, because no Latinos passed the exam.
Monday’s court session and hallway negotiation came at a tricky time for the department: It needs to hire more sergeants fast as part of a larger effort to cut down on a mushrooming overtime bill by putting enough supervisors and beat cops on the street.
Shafiq Abdussabur (center) is one of 10 plaintiffs in the state suit.
The city is moving to promote based on the results of a new sergeants exam, Meanwhile, lawyer John R. Williams filed a motion for a temporary injunction calling on the city to hold off on promotions until it deals with the New Haven 10 lawsuit.
If the city goes ahead and fills sergeant positions now, his clients will be able to win only monetary damages — not their due promotions — through the lawsuit, Williams argued. He is also representing eight other cops (including James Evarts and Marco Francia, pictured with Shafiq Abdussabur) in a federal lawsuit about the same exam.
The city replied with two motions filed Friday by Nicole Chomiak, a lawyer for Nuzzo & Roberts, a private firm the city hired to defend it in the case. Chomiak called on the court to toss out the case entirely. She called on the judge to toss out the case because five of the 10 plaintiffs: Samson Reed, Timothy Wilson, Albert McFadden, Jr., Mitchell Strickland and Malcolm Davis, Jr. She argued that the five don’t have legal standing to sue the city, since they didn’t do well enough on the exam to be promoted even if the city had kept the eligibility list for two years.
Second, Chomiak argued, the plaintiffs have no right to block the city from promoting more sergeants. The city would suffer greatly from an injunction because it needs to fill key safety positions, she argued.
Further, she argued, the motion for an injunction comes too early — because the exam results have not yet been released, so nobody knows how the plaintiffs will fare in the upcoming round of promotions.
After the case was called in court Monday morning, Chomiak and City Hall’s top lawyer, Victor Bolden, discussed the latter argument in the hallway with Williams.
Bolden urged Williams to allow the Civil Service Commission to certify the eligibility list. That way, everyone can find out how Williams’ clients fared. If they are in line for promotions now, the lawsuit would be moot, he argued.
Williams (pictured) made the city a counter-offer: We’ll let you certify the list, but only if you agree to hold off on making promotions. Bolden and Chomiak walked down the hall, out of earshot, to consider the offer.
As he waited for a reply, Williams conferred with Bonner and a few clients in the hallway. There are 18 vacancies out of 54 budgeted sergeant positions. Given the number of vacancies, Williams said, it’s “highly unlikely” that all of his 18 clients in the federal and state suits would be promoted to sergeant, so certifying the list won’t solve all their problems. =
But he had no problem with the city releasing the results of the exam, as long as they didn’t act on those results.
Bolden and Chomiak returned a few minutes later with an answer: They wouldn’t agree to the deal. So Williams decided to proceed with his motion to block them in court.
They returned to the courtroom, where Judge Robert E. Young told them to pick a date for a hearing on the motion for temporary injunction.
Cops piled into elevators to the first floor, where they awaited word of the next step. The crowd included Abdussabur, president of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers, and several of that group’s top officers. NABLEO, which is supporting the plaintiffs, declined comment.
Plaintiffs and supporters pose for news cameras as they leave court.
Officer Bruce Bonner, the lead plaintiff in the case, said even if his name pops up for promotion on the new sergeant’s list, that wouldn’t address the previous discrimination the officers endured.
“That’s not the issue,” he said. “We should’ve been promoted [long ago]. We’re disappointed in all of the actions of the city.”
If the eligibility list is ready in time, the Civil Service Commission aims to approve the it at the board’s next scheduled meeting on Dec. 11, according to Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts.
After about 10 minutes in court Monday Williams emerged from a judge’s chambers, where he and Chomiak had been discussing dates for an evidentiary hearing on the motion for injunction.
Williams announced he had “extremely good news”: A judge would hear their case prior to the Civil Service Commission’s next meeting. The next court date is set for Dec. 5 at 9:15 a.m. in Courtroom 4E of Superior Court on Church Street.
