With exemption from court order, Lawrence hires 7 Spanish-speaking police officers

The state has approved Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera’s request for a one-time exemption from a 44-year-old federal court order that was intended to increase minority representation on the police force but has failed to keep up with the city’s changing demographics.

The exemption, approved by the Massachusetts Human Resources Division, allows the city to hire the next seven police officers from a Civil Service list that will only include candidates who are fluent in Spanish.

Lawrence is bound to a 1972 consent decree resulting from a federal case, Castro v. Beecher, that alleged the Civil Service police entrance examination discriminated against black and Spanish-surnamed candidates. The decree requires Lawrence and nine other Massachusetts local police departments to hire one minority officer for every three white officers, off separate Civil Service lists provided by the state.

The court-ordered ratio is almost the inverse of the city’s current demographics, however. Three-quarters of Lawrence’s 77,000 residents are Latino and another 7 percent are African-American, according to the U.S. Census. Almost half of the city’s residents are Spanish-speaking or have limited English, but only a quarter of the city’s 96 patrol officers speak Spanish.

“It’s not just the diversity,” Mayor Rivera said. “If you’re in Lawrence and speak limited English, there’s an 80 percent chance when a police officer responds to your home for an emergency that the officer won’t be able to communicate you with you in your language. It’s not just a service thing, but also safety for the officer.”

In a city press release, Police Chief James Fitzpatrick said the Lawrence Police Department is based on a community-policing model, and that hiring more Spanish-speaking officers will allow the department to build a tighter bond with the community.

“This is not about quotas, it’s about common sense,” he said. “When almost half of your population is Spanish speaking and/or limited English you want to insure that the men and women of the department reflect that,” he said.

And while Rivera said that having a police force that reflects the makeup of the city and has the bilingual ability to communicate with all residents is important for an effective community-policing model, the consent decree also constrains the city’s ability to hire the most qualified police candidates overall.

“If you have two people of color who scored 100 on the [Civil Service] exam and are Lawrence residents and veterans … you’d think naturally they’d float to the top of the list, but because of the consent decree I have to hire one of them, and then find three people of non-color to hire,” he said. “That’s the dilemma we have.”

The Human Resources Division rejected an earlier exemption request in January because it included race as a criteria. The revised request was approved because it specifies only language as a criterion, which is allowable under state regulations as a specialized job-related qualification. Candidates must still pass the Civil Service exam first, along with the usual background screening and psychological and physical testing.