Diversity issues haunt police recruiting program

No effort was made to recruit minority officers even days after chief’s hiring announcement.

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By Lucas Sullivan, Staff Writer Updated 12:00 AM Friday, June 4, 2010

DAYTON — The city of Dayton kept its police recruiting program dark for nearly a year and unfunded despite spending more than $550,000 settling a federal lawsuit calling for the city to hire a more diverse pool of police and fire candidates.

The city is being forced by the U.S. Department of Justice to diversify its safety departments as it scrambles to replace a mass exodus of officers set to retire beginning next year.

The city is also paying about $400,000 in relief to black applicants who took the civil service test in 2006, but did not pass or were not hired. It also paid a California-based testing firm $150,000 to revamp the test.

But at the same time the city earlier this year sought expedited approval from the DOJ to begin hiring officers, no money or effort was made to begin recruiting minorities.

Sgt. Rhonda Williams, the department’s recruiting coordinator, said she resumed her program — evacuated nearly a year ago because of a personnel shortage — on May 17, four days after police Chief Richard Biehl announced applications for police officers will be accepted from July 14 through Sept. 13.

Williams resumed operations with $25,000 — half the amount budgeted for the last recruiting class in 2006 — and with one full-time officer. She also has half the time (three months) than she did in 2006 and must recruit a larger and more diverse pool of candidates.

“I’m not happy with lack of funds,” Commissioner Dean Lovelace said. “We have been too passive with our recruiting effort and we need to work to change it.”

Biehl said initially no money was budgeted for recruiting this year because there was “no definite resolution in sight regarding the DOJ lawsuit.”  Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2494 or  lsullivan@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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