CINCINNATI — After a court ruled the Cincinnati Police Department could no longer enforce its 1981 consent decree that required a certain percentage of new hires be Black or female officers, the city has drafted a new decree.
In September 2021, Judge Susan Dlott wrote that the consent decree — originally implemented after a 1980 lawsuit alleging discrimination against Black and female applicants — addresses a 40-year-old issue and the city of Cincinnati has failed to prove it remains necessary.
“Evidence of prior discrimination from over 40 years ago is too remote in time to provide an important governmental interest in remedying said discrimination,” Dlott wrote, adding that CPD has significantly improved the diversity of its police force in the time since the original lawsuit.
Then, CPD’s force was 9.9% Black and 3.4% female.
The consent decree set ambitious goals in response: 34% of new police hires should be Black, 23% should be women, and one in four sergeant promotions should be Black or female officers.
By January 2021, these goals had either been or were in close reach: 28.3% of all Cincinnati officers are minorities, 22.9% are women, and women and Black sergeants make up significant portions of all sergeants in the department. Because of this, the courts ruled the 1981 consent decree was no longer needed.
The city appealed the court's decision to block the consent decree in November 2021, but by July 2022, the sixth circuit court dismissed the appeal. In response, the city has drafted a modified consent decree, which was filed with the courts Dec. 12, 2022.
The modified consent decree will no longer use interim race- and gender-based goals to achieve the long- and short-term goals of the original consent decree, according to a motion filed for the new decree.
That doesn't mean the City of Cincinnati won't still seek hiring methods that apply best practices for hiring and retaining Black and female personnel, according to the new decree.
There are two new components in the modified consent decree intended to address just that.
First, the City of Cincinnati vows to hire a consultant "to identify current best practices to recruit, promote and retain African Americans and women to the positions of police officer and police sergeant," reads the motion to enter the new decree. The courts will be able to review that consultant's recommendations — and the city's response to those recommendations — and interfere if it deems the city is not meeting the objectives of the modified consent decree or any other legal hiring standards.
Second, the city will plan to select qualified candidates who meet the requirements of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To comply with this, the city will share hiring data with the courts, which can determine whether the city's hiring processes have a "statistically significant disparate impact" on the basis of sex or race and, if so, whether the processes are job-related to the positions of police officer and police sergeant — the two positions specifically addressed by the original consent decree as well.
"The Parties believe it is necessary to ensure that the diversity achieved while the Original Consent Decree was in place is not hampered by employment practices that unnecessarily exclude qualified African American and female applicants from employment and promotional opportunities," reads the motion.
The newly-submitted modified consent decree is 22 pages long and highlights in detail how the city will communicate its hiring data for judgement and under what time constraints. Promotions to higher positions, hiring and retention rates will all be open to scrutiny by the courts to ensure the progress made after the 1981 consent decree was adopted is not lost.
The modified decree was submitted not only by the City of Cincinnati, but also the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
A hearing on the new decree has not yet been scheduled.
You can read the modified consent decree as it was filed on Dec. 12, 2022 here:
Modified Consent Decree by WCPO 9 News on Scribd
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