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Teaneck Detective Sgt. John Garland confirmed for CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning that the Justice Department is proceeding with a proposed agreement with the state of New Jersey that further exams not be discriminatory to Hispanic and African-American candidates.
However, he said Justice officials used their authority to approve his and his two colleagues’ promotions.
“We were extremely happy to hear that our righfully made promotions were finally recognized,” Garland told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “We all breathed a huge sigh of relief that this nightmare is over.”
The state Civil Service Commission originally threw out their test results and froze the township’s eligibility list as part of a tentative consent decree with the federal government.
The agreement aims to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that the state’s police exams discriminate against minorities, specifically African-Americans and Hispanics.
The January 2010 lawsuit was based solely on a statistical analysis of test scores conducted by the DOJ going back to the year 2000, in which non-minority officers were scoring higher than minorities, Garland argued.
While not stating a reason for why it believed the exams discriminated, the government said the test results alone caused a “disparate impact” against them. The exams relied too much on “reading and writing” and were not shown to be job-related, the government argued.
As Garland noted, the exams consisted of questions based on New Jersey criminal laws, motor vehicle laws, New Jersey Attorney General Guidelines, case law, the Constitution, and nationally recognized police management texts from a prescribed reading list — all relevant, JOB-RELATED material made available to ALL prior to testing, they said.
Teaneck promoted the next five candidates from its list, numbers 2-6, in September 2010. Two of the promotions were of Hispanics.
In late July of this year, Teaneck requested the list again be certified in order to make additional promotions of three sergeants, numbers 7-9. One of the promotions, #7, was of an African-American.
Then, on Aug. 1, the DOJ and New Jersey agreed on the proposed consent order as a settlement of the suit. It affected more than 10 departments within New Jersey, including Teaneck, Jersey City, Paterson and Passaic.
Under the proposed pact, modified in September, state officials agreed to create a new test and set up a $1 million fund for retroactive payments to African-American and Hispanic candidates who would have been promoted if the state used a different method.
The deal is still contingent on approval by a federal judge.
A day after it was announced, the Civil Service Commission certified the next three candidates in Teaneck, including Garland, as “Eligible for Appointment.” A public ceremony formalizing their promotions was held at an Aug. 16 Mayor and Council meeting, with family, friends and colleagues on hand.
Then, on Oct. 14, the new sergeants were notified that the Civil Service Commission was refusing to recognize their promotions and that they may only be considered “provisional,” with no job rights or entitlement. Further use of these specific lists may hurt minorities even further, the commission said.
The commission’s objective, it said, was to promote 68 statewide candidates — 48 African-Americans and 20 Hispanics — before anyone else.
The three Teaneck sergeants were told had to take a new exam in January. However, they were also told the township would have to award priority promotions to two African-American candidates and one Hispanic candidate.
With barely three months until the new exam, Garland said, he and his colleagues were put at an extreme disadvantage: All three attended three previous study groups prior to taking their 2008 exam at what they said was considerable financial cost — $2,500 — and personal sacrifice in the form of time, travel, and study.
CLIFFVIEW PILOT published an editorial written by Garland on Oct. 23.
“That Teaneck, an affluent Bergen County suburb 4 miles long, where the average median household income is $84,000 (2000 Census), is lumped in with this group of much larger inner-city areas with poor social economic conditions is ABSURD,” he wrote. “Furthermore, as a result of another provision of the decree, Teaneck will be required to make three ‘priority appointments’ of minorities, specifically 2 black, 1 Hispanic, from the next list.
“Only after those ‘priority appointments’ are made can anyone else be eligible for promotion. In order to qualify as a ‘priority appointment,’ one must be a listed ‘claimant’ in the consent decree. Listed claimants are any minority who has taken a sergeant’s exam since 2000 and ha[s] not been promoted. Therefore, the highest anyone can expect to place on the new list, to include non-claimant minorities or whites, even if they answered every test question correct, is 4th.
“This is race-based decision making and promotions being awarded on the basis of race and the color of one’s skin as opposed to their professional qualifications and merits,” Garland wrote. “This practice has no place in a post-9/11 world for a critical first responder agency on the Eastern Seaboard.
“That these three sergeants are having their hard-earned and deserved promotions stripped from them after they were rightfully appointed is WRONG. That the state is enforcing the provisions of a ‘proposed consent decree’ that has yet to be signed by a federal judge or stood the test of a fairness hearing is WRONG. That these three Sergeants would be replaced by three minority appointments based on the color of their skin is discriminatory and WRONG.
“Common sense would dictate that if some change was needed for testing purposes, then future exams could be altered. But to retroactively go back in time and freeze existing lists is WRONG. To make ‘priority appointments’ of someone based on the color of their skin as opposed to their professional qualifications is WRONG.”
A public letter-writing and phone-call campaign to the Justice Department followed.
Then came the government’s ruling.
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