Three days after The Enquirer printed a statistical analysis of police suspensions and firings showing that black officers are treated more harshly than whites, she took action.

Lemmie

        In the city bureaucracy three days is warp speed. We've had city managers who thought “right away” meant sometime in the next fiscal year. During the tenure of her predecessor, requests for information from council often were sent to the bureaucracy in hopes that they would be permanently interred.

        Ms. Lemmie doesn't know the full extent of the discipline consistency problem, only that it exists. It probably will take a study by the inevitable consultant to get to the roots of the issue. But there is no reason not to get busy with what we know right now.

        On Thursday Ms. Lemmie said she will appoint a “departmental advocate” in the police force to enforce consistent discipline. This will be a supervisory cop — probably a sergeant or lieutenant — reporting directly to the chief.

        What this officer will “advocate” is fairness. When a supervisor writes up an errant cop out in one of the districts, the advocate will review the incident. If the recommended punishment is out of line with the department's discipline matrix, the advocate will say so and the supervisor will have some explaining to do. The chief will still be able to overrule the advocate, but the advocate's opinion will be part of the record if and when a case goes to arbitration.

        Considering 37 percent of all disciplinary cases involving more than three-day suspensions are overturned or reduced at arbitration because the punishments are inconsistently applied, the advocate's opinion should carry some weight.

        According to The Enquirer's analysis, 54 percent of the officers suspended or fired between 1997 and 2001 were black, but blacks comprised only 29 percent of the department. The analysis was built on data obtained from the city. But the city has been reluctant to analyze the figures itself. Quite the contrary, city policy, developed in part through negotiated contracts with the Fraternal Order of Police, requires the destruction of disciplinary records that are more than three years old. It's difficult to spot long-term trends when you insist on culling the data before anyone takes a good look at it.

        Last October the newspaper analyzed police punishments of all types, without regard to race. Inconsistencies were rampant. That was at a time when city officials were bemoaning the high rate of reversal by the arbitrators. The result of the inconsistently applied punishments was that the city was forced to take bad cops back onto the force. Members of City Council clucked-clucked, but didn't do much.

        That is now ancient history and council didn't seem to have studied history earlier this week when it started questioning the police chief and city manager about the latest claims of inconsistency — claims that point to far darker problems than simple bureaucratic inefficiency. Police officials cautioned against reading too much into the statistics. No two disciplinary cases are exactly alike, they said. There are variables such as an officer's experience and assignment. None of the police brass seemed to want to acknowledge that a problem even existed, much less come up with a plan to deal with it.

        That's when Valerie Lemmie, who didn't join the city until February, did something surprising. She said wait a minute. If the numbers show a disparity that must mean something and we had better find out what.

        It turns out employees from other city departments had started calling her and saying that disparities in discipline aren't limited to the police department. That doesn't necessarily mean inherent racism goes to work whenever an employee gets into trouble — although we shouldn't be too quick to discount the possibility. Maybe line supervisors aren't adequately trained in how to apply discipline. Maybe nobody guards against the institutional nepotism that protects “friends” in any large organization. In any case, it certainly is a problem that many city employees believe the disparities exist. That is reason enough to take action.

        Contact David Wells at 768-8310; fax: 768-8610; e-mail: dwells@enquirer.com. Cincinnati.com keyword: Wells.

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