Jeffrey Neal is a Cincinnati fire lieutenant. In 2015, the Department began accepting internal applications for fire captain and administered promotional exams as part of that process. Neal applied for the advancement and participated in the promotional exam, which consisted of five sections. The first two sections presented objective, multiple choice questions; whereas the remaining…
David Meadows is a police officer with the City of North Bay Village in Florida. In January 2017, Meadows sat for the sergeant’s examination and placed second on the promotional list. The City uses a rule of three. Under the collective bargaining agreement between the City and the FOP, the police chief has discretion in…
Hosea Word is a sergeant and aspiring lieutenant in the Chicago Police Department. When he took the departmental lieutenants’ exam in 2006, he was ranked 150th of all candidates. The sergeants ranked 1 through 149 all received promotions. Sergeant Word was the highest-scoring candidate who did not. In 2015, when Word next took the exam,…
In selecting police officers for promotion to the position of sergeant in 2005 and 2008, the City of Boston and several other Massachusetts communities and state employers adapted a test developed by the State’s Human Resources Division (HRD), charged under state law with creating a selection tool that “fairly test[s] the knowledge, skills and abilities…
Greg Peterson and Souphanny Dean are Richfield, Minnesota police officers. In April 2012, Peterson sued the City, claiming that the Department engaged in age discrimination when it removed him from the special investigations unit earlier that year. A trial court ordered judgment for Peterson on September 19, 2013. In the fall of 2013, Peterson, Dean,…
Ten black police sergeants sued the City of Boston under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleging that the multiple-choice examinations the Department administered in 2005 and 2008 to select which sergeants to promote to the rank of lieutenant had a racially disparate impact on minority candidates and were insufficiently job-related to…
