NAACP Challenges County Agencies' Hiring Practices

A day after making a letter to the school system public, the Anne Arundel County branch of the NAACP released a letter Tuesday calling for a federal investigation into the hiring practices of the Anne Arundel County police department and library system.

On Monday, the (AACPS) with disparities in the way it disciplines black students versus students of other races.

In a press release detailing a letter addressed to U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Jacqueline Boone Allsup, president of the Anne Arundel County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called on the senator to investigate the hiring practices of the county’s police department.

Allsup said that members of the county organization, who also happen to work for the police department, said they have been victims of “disparate treatment.”

Anne Arundel County Police Sgt. Eric Scott, who has been with the department for 20 years, detailed his experiences as a member of the force in a letter that also went to Mikulski.

“Within the 20 years that I’ve been with the police department, my experience has been that there hasn’t been a lot of support for African-American members of the department,” he said in a telephone interview with Glen Burnie Patch. “Each time a new chief of police is selected [by the County Executive] the African-American members will complain that there are not enough African-American [officers] in the department. It doesn’t represent the makeup of the community.”

Scott is a Pasadena resident who has spent his entire career as a police officer with the Anne Arundel County department. He said he was hurt in the line of duty in December 2008 and returned to the department to work with the telephone reporting service in police headquarters in Millersville in September 2009. Were he not an “injured officer,” Scott said he would be serving as a patrol sergeant in the Southern District.

According to information provided from the county police, there are 47 African Americans in the department out of the of the 635 filled sworn positions.

“The Anne Arundel County Police Department has an excellent working relationship with the NAACP and the Human Relations Commission. The police department does not tolerate discrimination of any kind. The agency remains committed to supporting minority recruiting, in part with the assistance of our minority recruiter, and creating a diverse and positive work environment for all employees,” said police spokesman Justin Mulcahy in an email provided by David Abrams, a spokesman for County Executive John R. Leopold.

Scott said he believed the placement recruitment , a black woman, came as a result of African-American officers urging the chief to hire more minorities.

“In April of 2010, over 70 percent of African-American [officers] started asking for a change—asking to have a minority recruiting officer to put forth a community [of officers] to reflect the changes in the community. What the chief heard is that we need a recruiter who is a minority,” Scott said. “There is no emphasis on minority recruiting.”

In a with Glen Burnie Patch, McGregor said the more applicants that become recruits, the better. People who can speak Spanish fluently also are sought.

"I strongly encourage females and minorities to apply," McGregor said in December 2010.

But Scott and Allsup said the issues had not been adequately addressed.

“The NAACP believes that its members has exhausted all of the internal procedures to have the County Executive and his administration to address the concerns of these African-American officers,” Allsup said in a press release. "As taxpayers, we will not allow our tax-dollars to be used to subsidized racism.”

Scott also sited the lack of African-American officers assigned to different specialized units within the department as an issue, with the exception of school resource officers. Officers must apply to serve on a specialized unit.

Additionally, Allsup said the NAACP contacted Leopold earlier this year to look into allegations of racism in the Anne Arundel County Public Library (AACPL) system, requesting the county do an audit to determine if Anne Arundel county agencies were in line with federal and state equal employment opportunity practices. According to the press release, the group never received a written response from Leopold.

“The NAACP has asked Sen. Mikulski to request an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department of these allegations, because we believe that only a judicious and expeditious review by an independent agency will result in the necessary reforms that are needed,” Allsup said in the release.

AACPL administrator Skip Auld did not immediately return a request for comment, but Abrams said the library system created a "Workforce Quality and Diversity Action Plan" in response to the complaint filed with the Human Relations Commission.

"It is our intention to make sure that every citizen's civil rights are respected. Our memberships consist of whites, Latinos, African Americans and others. Whenever any of our members’ civil rights are violated, we intend to be on the frontline [ensuring] that those violations are reversed,” Allsup said.

And Scott said that he has felt his rights have been violated for years.

“I never wanted to be in this position,” he said. “You can call me naïve, but I always thought that with each new chief it would get better.”

In previous years, when African-American officers complained, Scott said small changes would be made and last about a year before returning to the way they were before.

“Everybody has a wake-up call and I had mine. It’s not just me making this complaint. I’m one person who’s speaking out, but there are more of us," he said.