UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT
The Bridgeport Guardians, et
al.
Plaintiffs,
v.
Arthur J. Delmonte,
et al.,
Defendants
Civil No. 5:78cv175(JBA)
[DOC. # 1292]
2005 U.S. Dist. Lexis 7563
April 29, 2005, Decided
Prior decision at 227 F.R.D. 32
Ruling
on Special Master’s Recommended Ruling
Re:
Rotations
Janet Bond Arterton, United
States District Judge.
I. Background
Rotations of
assignments within the Bridgeport Police Department are required by the 1983
Remedy Order and the May 31, 2001 Stipulation, which modified “the procedure
under which police officers are rotated through various geographic and
specialized division assignments.” Stipulation p. 2.
The Stipulation recites that after a series of meetings, all parties, including
the recently-joined police union and the non-party Hispanic Society, agreed to “changes
to the rotations procedure.” Id. The Stipulation was approved by the Special
Master in his Recommended Ruling Re: Rotation Policy, dated June 21, 2001, and
approved and adopted by this Court on August 28, 2001. See Docs. # # 1124, 1140.
Since approval of
the 2001 Stipulation, however, the Bridgeport Police Department (“BPD” or “Department”)
has failed to abide by the reporting requirements of the Stipulation “concerning
the manner in which the rotations have been carried out.” Stipulation
p. 7. The BPD was required to file specific reports tracking the
assignments resulting from the rotations so the Special Master and, presumably,
the BPD could insure that rotations fulfilled the fundamental purpose of the
Remedy Order: to afford equal employment opportunities within the BPD.
Notwithstanding the important purpose of the reports, the Department failed to
file any rotation reports concerning the January 2002 rotation. See Order dated
Jan. 14, 2004 [Doc. # 1256]; Recommended
Ruling Re: Compliance with Stipulated Amendment to Remedy Order, Dec. 11, 2003,
at 6 (approved and adopted Jan. 30, 2004). As the January 2004 rotation
approached, complaints were filed by 14 members of the Tactical Narcotics Team
(TNT), urging the Court to discontinue rotations so they could stay in TNT.
Because the required reports concerning the 2004 rotation plan also had never
been filed, the Court was prevented from evaluating the rotation plan to see if
it should be continued, modified, or discontinued. Given the BPD’s unexcused violation of a Court order, the BPD was
held in contempt for failure to comply with the rotation plan and reporting
requirements of the 2001 Stipulation. The 2004 rotation was thus stayed pending
further order, to issue after hearings, which the Court directed the Special
Master to hold. See Order dated Jan. 14, 2004 [Doc. # 1256].
These hearings were to cover three subjects:
(1) establishing procedures to institutionalize future compliance with court orders;
(2) recommending sanctions to be imposed for violation of court orders; and
(3) reviewing the rotation reports submitted and any complaints
connected with the reports and making recommendations on rotation orders. The
Special Master held hearings on April 7, 2004.
The Special
Master’s Recommended Ruling Re: Rotations, dated May 14, 2004 [Doc. # 1292], addresses
all three issues and recommends: (1) ratification of new compliance procedures
implemented by the Department, (2) sanctions of $500/day for the previously
untimely rotation reports, for a total of $430,000 in fines, and (3) renewed
rotation of officers from patrol, TNT, and all specialized commands. The Court
approves and adopts the recommendation approving the BPD’s
compliance procedures and expansion of the internal compliance officer’s
duties, and directs the status report ordered by the Special Master to be filed
no later than May 18, 2005. Based on the hearings held before this Court on
April 12 and 27, 2005, and for the reasons that follow, the Court also approves
and adopts the recommended ruling that the stay of rotations be
lifted and the system of mandatory rotations be applied to all specialized
divisions of the BPD.
During the April
2005 hearings, Acting Chief Anthony Armeno told this
Court that he was withdrawing his predecessor’s blanket objection to rotations
in the specialized units, and agreed to consider rotations in the specialized
units, focusing on the costs and lengths of specialized training required for
eligibility and other operational considerations. The union argued against
rotations in specialized units as exceeding the scope of the remedy order and
as undermining the seniority system of the collective bargaining agreement. The
Court concludes that the Remedy Order and the 2001 Stipulation do not exempt
rotations in the specialized units.
II. Discussion
A. The 1983
Ruling and Remedy Order
A central finding
by Judge Daly in his opinion issued in 1982 was “that plaintiffs have
established that defendants unlawfully and intentionally discriminated against
black police officers on the basis of their race in assignments to the
Specialized Divisions of the B.P.D. in violation of Title VI and VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.” Bridgeport Guardians v. Delmonte, 553 F. Supp. 601, 609 (D. Conn. 1982).
Plaintiffs presented evidence that “all but one of the 33 black police officers
in the B.P.D. [at the time were] assigned to patrol” and were not given access
to the “specialized divisions which, in addition to being generally more
prestigious and/or less stressful than Patrol, afford greater opportunities to
gain experience and skills that contribute both to job satisfaction and to the
possibility of advancement.” Id. at 607. Judge Daly found that the Federal Office of Revenue
Sharing (ORS) concluded in 1979 that defendants had violated antidiscrimination
laws, “finding that minorities are underrepresented and underutilized in all
divisions except the Patrol Division.” Id. at 608.
The “Assignment
to Specialized Divisions” section of the opinion identified those units that
were prestigious, less stressful, and/or afforded greater job satisfaction or
advancement opportunities: Tactical, Records, Booking, Police Athletic League,
Special Services and Youth Bureau. n1 Id. at 607. At the April 27 hearing, the Union proffered
the undisputed fact that the Traffic division also existed at the time of the
order. The fact that it is not mentioned in the Remedy Order is of no
consequence in this Court’s view, and reflects only that Traffic was not
identified as one of the desirable units closed to minority officers.
In the twenty-two
years following the Remedy Order, the BPD has reorganized, expanded, renamed,
and introduced many other “specialized divisions” or “specialized units,”
which, by the BPD’s representation, now encompass
one-third of its police officers. n2 The BPD and the
Union maintain that these post-Remedy Order specialized units are not within
the scope of the Remedy Order and were exempted by the 2001 Stipulation. The
Court disagrees.
The 1983 Remedy
Order directed that:
1. At least fourteen black police officers shall be appointed immediately to positions in the Tactical, booking and Records Units and in the Police Athletic League, and such assignments shall continue for at least twelve months.
2. ...
3. Defendants
shall at all times maintain assignments of black officers to positions in the
specialized divisions of the Bridgeport Police Department (“B.P.D.”) specified
in P1 on all shifts such that the percentage of black officers so assigned is
at least equal to the percentage of black officers in the department.
Additionally, defendants shall, within 90 days of the date of this Order,
establish a rotation system pursuant to which all patrol officers who desire
such assignments will have equal access to assignments in the specialized
divisions regardless of race, color, sex, religion, or nationality. Any
rotation system shall be subject to the Court’s approval and shall insure that
the percentage of black officers assigned to the specialized divisions is at
all times at least equal to the percentage of black officers in the department.
Id.
at 618-19. The terms of the Remedy Order do not exempt any
specialized units. The goal of the rotation system was to achieve racial parity
in the select units such that they, too, would reflect the racial composition
of the BPD as a whole. The Department parses the language of the order stating
that all officers “who desire such assignments will have equal access to
assignments in the specialized divisions regardless of race ...,” id. at 618
(emphasis added), as meaning that if there were no requests or volunteers, no
rotation was mandated. The Remedy Order nowhere states that rotation into a
specialized unit is contingent on an application from an officer. Rather, the
percentage of minorities and women in the specialized units was to be, at a
minimum, the same percentage as in the department overall, but no minority or
female officer who desired a specialized assignment was to be prevented from
rotating into a specialized unit just because the minimum percentage already
had been achieved.
B. May 31,
2001 Stipulation
The BPD argues
that the particulars of how the Tactical Division rotation would operate, as specified
in the 2001 Stipulation, “expressly exempted” all other specialized units
except TNT from rotation. The Court disagrees. The purpose of the Stipulation
was to amend certain rotation procedures, and it did so for TNT (the successor
to the Tactical Division), Community Policing, and the subsequently
civilianized Records and Booking units “in the event that police officers are
re-assigned to them.” Stipulation p. 2. The
Stipulation expressly provides that “except as set forth herein, the rotations
provisions of the Remedy Order and of all subsequent Court orders shall remain
unchanged.” Id. P1. Since
the 1983 Remedy Order required rotation to achieve racial balance, including in
desirable specialized, non-supervisory units, this requirement remains in
effect and applies to subsequently formed special
units. To hold otherwise would subvert the very purpose of the rotation
requirement by excluding from the remedial goal of equal opportunity the
specialized units which have proliferated since 1983. Since nearly one-third of
the BPD’s officers currently are assigned to
specialized units, and minority officers are not uniformly proportionally
represented in these units, to exempt most specialized units from rotation
would permit repetition of patterns of exclusion - intentionally or
unintentionally - which the Remedy Order sought to eradicate.
C. Necessity
of Rotations to Address Discrimination
Even though the BPD is currently
comprised of 47% minority officers, of whom approximately 16% are African
American, and 53% Caucasian officers, many of the specialized units fail to
reflect the racial or ethnic composition of the Department. The BPD’s exhibits and testimony showed that there are no
African-American officers in the Motorcycle unit, and only one each in the K-9,
Mounted, Traffic, and Computer Aided Dispatch units. See BPD Exs. 17, 20. Only four out of
twenty-six officers in TNT are African-American, while eight are Hispanic. Id.
Therefore it is evident that remedial rotations are still necessary to provide
department-wide equality of access to all BPD officers.
D. Collective
Bargaining Agreement
The Bridgeport
Police Union objects that the recommended rotations will violate the seniority
provisions of the applicable Collective Bargaining Agreement. The Agreement
states in relevant part:
Section 5 -
(A) All employees currently assigned to specific
divisions shall remain in said assignments unless removed for just cause. Any
future vacancy shall be filled, as described below within the classification
applicable to the vacant position, and subject to the needs of the department.
...
(B) The divisions for which Police Officers on active
duty may bid on a seniority basis are Patrol, Traffic, K-9, Tactical (TNT), and
the Communications Center, which includes the front lobby desk. ...
(C) The ... Patrolmen on active duty shall bid, based
upon departmental seniority, for all of said divisions above, (sergeants shall
also bid for the Record Room) as vacancies occur and the department’s desire
[sic] to fill said vacancies with the equivalent classification.
Agreement between City of Bridgeport and Bridgeport Police
Local 1159, 7/1/01-6/30/04, at 37-38.
The above-quoted
portion is identical in all relevant respects to the previous Agreements in
effect between July 1, 1985 and June 30, 2001, see Union Exs.
6-10, and throughout the time the rotation system has been in place. Moreover,
the Union participated in negotiations and agreed to the 2001 Stipulation,
which expressly provides procedures for rotation in TNT, Community Policing,
and “specialized divisions which were the subject of rotation requirements ...
but which have since been civilianized.” Stipulation at 2.
Acting Chief Armeno testified at the April 12 hearing that the rotation
and seniority bidding systems currently coexist in specialized divisions that
rotate: once the minimum number of slots is filled based on the rotation plan,
the remaining vacancies are available for seniority bidding. No reason has been
offered why an accommodation between a rotation system and a seniority system
could not be implemented for the other specialized divisions. n3 The Court therefore is unpersuaded
by the Union’s argument that the recommended rotations would be incompatible
with the seniority rights of its members.
III. Conclusion and Order
Accordingly, it
is ordered as follows:
1. The stay of rotations
entered on January 14, 2004 [Doc. #
1256] is lifted.
2. The Bridgeport Police Department
shall implement rotations of all non-supervisory personnel, including
specialized units such as: TNT, Community Policing, Mounted Police, K-9,
Traffic, Motorcycle, Training, Housing Authority, Marine, and Emergency
Services. Rotations shall be in accordance with a plan submitted to and
approved by the Special Master and the Court.
3. The Chief of Police shall submit
a proposed rotation plan for 2005-2006 in accordance with this order to the
Special Master by June 30, 2005. The proposal shall include proposed lengths of
rotations through each specialized unit and a narrative description of all
specialized divisions and the training required for such assignments. If any
rotations in such assignments are proposed to be longer than two years,
justifications must be given. The Chief of Police is encouraged, but not
required, to assemble a representative task force to assist him in developing
this proposed rotation plan. The Special Master may hold a hearing on the
proposed rotation plan as he deems necessary.
4. Fines of
$1000/day will be imposed for late filing. The Chief of Police is to personally
insure the Department’s compliance with this order, on risk of contempt for
noncompliance.
5. Rotations
shall begin no later than Sunday, October 2, 2005.
6. If eligibility for specialized
unit assignments requires special training, the Department should rotate those
assignments among qualified officers until new officers are trained. The
Department shall conduct training sessions with sufficient frequency that
patrol officers can readily obtain the necessary training.
7. If the
Department seeks to exempt any officer from rotation under the plan, it must
file a motion with the Special Master seeking the exemption and setting forth
the reasons therefor. The rotation plan may include only those exemptions
specifically approved by the special Master.
8. The Department
shall submit rotation status reports containing the information and in the
format required by § III.C.2 (pgs. 16-17) of the Recommended Ruling Re:
Rotations dated May 14, 2004. Rotation status reports shall be filed with the
Special Master on November 1, 2005, and June 1, 2006. These rotation status
reports shall include: (1) the manner in which the rotations were carried out;
(2) a chart detailing any changes of assignment since the rotation took place; and
(3) any complaints received. In addition, the report due June 1, 2006 shall
describe the proposed assignments for the rotation of October 2006. Future
reports and/or additional information will be submitted to the Special Master
as necessary.
9. The Special
Master will hold hearings on the proposed rotation for 2006-2007 after review
of the reports filed on June 1, 2006.
10. That portion
of the Recommended Ruling concerning sanctions to be imposed for previous late
rotation reports remains under advisement to afford the BPD the opportunity to
supplement its record before the Special Master concerning its financial
resources and the impact of the recommended sanctions on the contemnor BPD.
It is so ordered.
Janet Bond Arterton
United States
District Judge
Dated at New Haven, Connecticut, this 29th day of April, 2005.
Notes:
1. The
Connecticut Department of Labor had ruled that only supervisory personnel could
work in Special Services and the Youth Bureau. Bridgeport Guardians, 553 F.
Supp. at 607.
2. The
witnesses at the April 12 and 27 hearings differed on what “specialized unit”
meant and which “units” should properly be denominated as such. The term
generally was used broadly to describe any collection of officers whose duties
require more than basic patrol training to perform some particularized service
3. The Court notes that the evidence at the April hearings demonstrated the potential disparate impact on minority officers that could result from sole reliance on a seniority system for assignment to specialized units. See BPD Ex. 23 (table of seniority of BPD officers by race.