DANIEL TEPFER dtepfer@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 04/02/2008 04:18:31 PM EDT
BRIDGEPORT — A Superior Court judge yesterday threw out the Police Department's latest detective promotional list, ruling it has an adverse impact on African-Americans and violates federal law.
Judge Dale W. Radcliffe ruled that an earlier promotional list from December 2006 should be used instead to fill nine positions in the detective bureau.
Thomas Bucci, a lawyer representing Officer John Burke, who challenged the more recent promotional list, called the decision, "A favorable decision for the sanctity of the civil service system."
City Personnel Director Ralph Jacobs also said yesterday the ruling appears favorable to the city, although he said he had not seen it.
The dispute decided by the judge involved three separate scoring methods used by Dr. James Outtz on the results of the Sept. 9, 2006, promotional exam. The candidates who took that test were ranked on a promotional list that came out in December 2006.
Outtz, who was hired by the city to administer and grade promotional exams for the Police Department, initially scored the 2006 test with 50 percent for the written portion and 50 percent for what is referred to as the crime scene component.
Based on that scoring, Burke ranked sixth on the promotional list.
But during a hearing before the judge, Outtz testified he later learned he was not required by the city to use the 50/50 weighing formula so he rescored the exam allocating 70 percent of the weight to the written portion and 30 percent to the crime scene component.
Based on the rescoring, Burke ranked first on the promotional exam that came out April 11, 2007.
But after that list was issued, the police union protested the scoring, maintaining that Outtz should have used the "raw scoring" method used by the city on a promotional exam in 2001.
The raw scoring method grades each individual question in both categories and then combines the score without regard to the number of questions in each category.
So based on the union's objection Outtz used the raw scoring method and produced still another promotional list on July 13, 2007, even though he admitted the list would produce a "disparate impact" on African American candidates.
The disparate impact, under guidelines of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, relates to the standard that it is discriminatory if the passing rate on a promotional exam for a class of minority candidates is less than four-fifths of the passing rate for the majority of the candidates.
Burke placed 19th on the third promotional list.
Radcliffe ruled the two 2007 promotional lists were created in violation of the city charter after a valid list already had been compiled in compliance with all charter requirements. He then nullified the two later lists.