By Police1 Staff
NEW YORK — A group of black detectives filed a discrimination lawsuit Monday alleging they were denied promotions because of their race.
Detectives Jon McCollum, Roland Stephens and the widow of Detective Theodore Coleman allege that their bosses promoted less qualified and less experienced white detectives over them, WABC reported.
The detectives filed a federal labor complaint over their unit assignments in 2011 and a five-year investigation found that the promotion process stymied black detectives. But the detectives and attorneys said nothing has changed since that finding.
McCollum told the New York Daily News that he got high evaluation scores and received 35 department honors. He said he has never received a CCRB complaint, has never been disciplined and hasn’t called in sick during his 24-year tenure.
“I did everything I could to get promoted,” McCollum said. “I watched countless white detectives from my class move up in rank, but not me. Multiple supervisors told me if I were white I would have been promoted.”
He said there is no criteria to the promotion system and it’s based on subjective factors.
“When I asked why I’m not being promoted, For the first five or six years, they just said, ‘I don’t know,’” McCollum said.
The suit alleges that there are no high-ranking officers in the Intel division who are black. The New York Daily News reported that the NYPD recently moved a black lieutenant into the unit after complaints were filed.
NYPD Assistant Commissioner Peter Donald said the department had been aware of the allegations for several years. After a EEOC complaint was made, the PD turned over its promotion criteria to the Department of Justice, which declined to pursue the case.
“A review of a recent 10-year period, which includes the timeframe of this litigation, shows that black third-grade detectives within the Intelligence Bureau were promoted at a faster pace than their colleagues,” Donald said.