Boston Police Gird for Promotions Battle

Officer Eric Eversley, a black eight-year member of the Boston police force, knows why it needs affirmative action: “We’ve got only one black sergeant and three acting sergeants out of 200 black cops.” He strongly supports a bitterly controversial court-supervised quota plan to overcome a long history of racial discrimination and move more blacks into the higher ranks.

The battle over the Boston police force foreshadows a new battle taking shape over affirmative action--the issue not of who is hired but of who is promoted.

Minorities and women, traditionally consigned to low-ranking jobs by both governmental and private employers, are now calling for quotas and other special programs to help them climb up the promotional ladder. “I don’t see any other way to get the numbers up,” said Eversley, a soft-spoken college graduate with a degree in criminal justice.

But affirmative action promotion plans like the one in Boston are arousing intense resistance.

‘Reverse Discrimination’

Boston’s plan, vigorously opposed as “reverse discrimination” by many white officers, calls for promoting as many as 25 blacks to sergeant even if that means skipping over whites who score higher on an examination now in progress.

To white officer William McCarthy, the special advantage given blacks on Boston’s new sergeant’s exam is grossly unfair and demoralizing. McCarthy, who like Eversley holds a college degree in criminal justice, already considers himself a two-time “victim” of affirmative action: His hiring was delayed for five years and he was laid off once despite having more seniority than blacks who were kept on the job.

“I grew up in a mixed community and we all received the same education,” McCarthy said. “Maybe our parents and grandparents discriminated, but our generation hasn’t discriminated against anyone.”

That is no consolation to black police officers. Six years ago, a group of blacks sued to block the appointment of a new batch of sergeants, charging that the exam used to determine eligibility for sergeant discriminated against them.

Refused Score Results

Blacks “would take the exam and then be informed they had failed,” said Barbara Arnwine, head of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which handled the suit. “The black officers would ask, ‘What was my score?’ ‘Can’t tell you.’ ‘Well, can I see my exam?’ ‘We destroyed all the exams.’ It was pretty bad news.”

In 1980, city officials and the group of black officers entered into a consent decree, supervised by a federal court, that provided for an independent organization to prepare a culturally unbiased examination and to score the results. The agreement, similar to ones reached in other cities, permitted the immediate appointment of 25 white sergeants but held open 25 other slots.

The plan specified a gradual increase in the number of black sergeants over a five-year period. A certain--though still undetermined--number of blacks would have to be promoted to sergeant even if that meant passing over some higher-scoring whites. City officials went ahead with the exam only after a federal court threw out a suit filed by a group of white officers seeking to block it.

25 ‘Acting’ Sergeants

Meanwhile, pending the outcome of the exam, the city has filled the open slots with 25 “acting” sergeants--20 whites and five blacks. Blacks protested that the appointment of acting sergeants was a ruse to delay implementing the court-supervised quota program. And disgruntled whites complained that the appointments were made, in the words of Officer Kevin Foley, “strictly on a political basis--no standards, no tests.”

Despite the wrangling over promotions, the white-dominated Boston Patrolmen’s Assn. has accepted a court-supervised affirmative action plan that requires the hiring of one black officer for every newly hired white.

“Minorities and women were held back, fine--rectify that and get them on the job,” said Robert Guiney, president of the Boston Patrolmen’s Assn. “But once the job is secured, everyone should have a fair shot at promotion.”