The Perplexing Promotion Problem At The Memphis Police Department

Abstract

For over 30 years, the City of Memphis had faced charges of racial discrimination in its hiring and promotion practices in the Police Department. In the 1970s the City entered into a series of consent decrees in federal court that required the city to engage in affirmative action to eliminate a pattern of discrimination. Subsequent lawsuits by white officers sued the City under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, claiming that they were unjustly passed over for promotion to permit black candidates with lower test scores to advance. The cases dragged on for years amidst appeals, delays, and a federal court injunction that stalled police promotions. The 1989 case was finally resolved when a federal court ruled in 1999 that the city's use of quotas to promote black officers in the 1980s was unconstitutional and awarded the plaintiffs $2 million.

However, police promotions were soon disrupted again when promotion exams were stolen, a federal judge ruled that the promotion test was invalid, and city administrators rescinded the previous promotions. Following the development and administration of a new promotion test to a candidate group that was about half white and half black, nearly twice as many white as black officers qualified for promotion, a disturbing result to both the police administration and the officer candidates and their unions. Confronted with an urgent need to proceed with the promotion process, yet facing strong objections from some police officers and their associations, Memphis city officials must decide what to do.