When Penn Police Officer Pat Chad walked into roll call on August 6 -- the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing -- several years ago, the tables were lined with mushrooms. "Pat, doesn't that remind you of your family?" one of the Japanese American's fellow officers asked, referring to the mushroom clouds produced upon the explosion of an atomic bomb. After roll call, Chad, who left the department earlier this year, complained about the incident to his sergeant. "I told the sergeant I didn't appreciate it, and I didn't think it was funny," Chad said. But the sergeant, Chad says, told him that it was not a big deal and to "get over it." "That's just the way it is at Penn Police," Chad said. "You just took it and went along."
'Window dressing'
By the numbers, the University Police department is fairly diverse. According to Police Chief Maureen Rush, the 98-officer force is 64.8 percent white, 26.4 percent African American, 5.5 percent Latino, 1.1 percent Asian/Pacific Islander and 2.2 percent Native American. These figures encompass all sworn police officers, including administrators such as Rush. But Ken Yuen -- a Chinese-American former officer who filed a racial discrimination complaint last month after he was fired -- said minorities are inadequately represented at the UPPD. "It doesn't really represent the community it serves.... I was the only Asian officer on a campus with, what, 25 percent Asians?" Yuen said. Penn Police Officer Miguel Ortiz, one of five Latino officers on the force, agreed, saying "there is a need for more" Latinos on the force. And while other officers expressed satisfaction with the amount of minority representation in general, they said there is a clear lack of minorities in management positions. Currently, there are three African-American sergeants, but they are the only minorities in that level of management or higher. "There could be more representation in the supervisors," said one minority officer, who asked that his name not be used. "There's a lack of minority officers being in the upper echelon." Former Penn Police officer Mark Johnson said minority officers seem to only be able to advance so far in the UPPD hierarchy. "There's a glass ceiling there," Johnson said. "There are no minorities in any decision-making capacity." According to Rush, though, her administration has made a special effort to increase the number of minorities in management positions. "I have promoted all of the minorities that you're looking at," Rush said. "It's my desire to increase minority representation above the rank of sergeant." She said that there are no minorities above sergeant because the individuals she promoted need time to work their way up the chain of command. But one long-time Penn Police officer, who asked that his name not be used, said he sees the promotion of minority officers as mere "window dressing" to make the department look more diverse than it actually is. "There will certainly be a minority lieutenant at some point in the near future, which will be window dressing as well," the officer said. The department did have an African-American chief, George Clisby, until 1996. He was then essentially demoted when the chief's position was split into two, with Rush taking one of the the newly created positions. Clisby eventually left the department two years later and the job was re-integrated. There was also an African-American captain, John Richardson, three years ago. Johnson said he thinks minority administrators leave the department in part because of their race. "I've seen the department replace key people in key positions... with white people," Johnson said. And a long-time Penn Police officer added that he believes a disproportionate number of minorities have been fired over the past few years in an attempt to "clean the slate of any minority presence in the powers that be."
Taking action
That officer is not alone in his suspicion. At least three former Penn Police officers have filed racial discrimination complaints against the University or its Police department in the past five years. Two of these complaints, filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, resulted in lawsuits, both of which were settled out of court. In one of the lawsuits, filed in 1996, former Public Safety employee Sylvia Canada claimed she was fired from the department because she is African American. Among her grievances was that a white male officer refused to back her up at a crime scene and later assaulted her. And former officer Demetrius Casillas, who is Puerto Rican, sued for discrimination and defamation in 1997, claiming his supervisors frequently made ethnic slurs. He also claimed that after he was terminated, Rush tried to prevent other police departments from hiring him. Casillas would not comment for this story, citing his settlement agreement. Several current and former UPPD officers see the lawsuits as symptomatic of growing problems within the department -- racial insults and preferential treatment based on ethnicity.
More than a joke
According to Chad, officers sometimes made racial insults toward Casillas. The officers reportedly called the Latino's car a "low-rider" and a "pimp-mobile." Once, another former officer added, a supervisor asked Casillas to repair a police car radio because "Puerto Ricans know how to hook up car stereo systems." And Chad recalled a sergeant who allegedly permitted the same officer who made the mushroom joke to wear a Confederate flag as a bandanna under his bicycle helmet. But while current Penn Police Officer Floyd Johnson acknowledged that officers sometimes make ethnic jokes, he says he does not find them offensive. "On all jobs we have people joking, we have ethnic jokes -- nothing harsh, nothing intended to be downgrading," said Floyd Johnson, who is African American. However, EEOC spokesman Reginald Welch said that ethnic discrimination or harassment in the workplace is always illegal -- even if the person being insulted is not upset. "Some people try and knock it off as a joke," Welch said. "Still, all those things are against the law." Rush said that all reported incidents of racially offensive speech are dealt with promptly, and the offending officer is issued a warning. "I can assure you that anything that would be offensive racially, if brought to a supervisor's attention, would not be happening," she said. Many other minority officers agreed with Rush, saying they are not treated any differently than white officers. "I was treated just the same," said Perdetha Watson, an African-American officer who has worked in the department for one year. "Our jobs are the same, we all get the same calls, we all get the same opportunities, the same benefits." But others said Rush was actually part of the problem, and that the racial climate of the department was better before she became chief. "It actually used to be a pretty good place to work," Chad said. "It was a great place to work before Maureen Rush." And a long-time minority officer who still works in the department said that Rush seems to show preference to white officers with regard to promotions and general treatment. "Within the powers that be, there is certainly a theme of preferential treatment towards some people, and those people are of non-color," the officer said.
