Aurora panel stifles comment on police review

Chief rips meeting on black sergeant's bid for promotion

Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 20, 2007 at midnight

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AURORA - They came prepared to give the Civil Service Commission a piece of their mind.

They were muzzled on arrival.

Several black Aurora community members attended the commission's meeting Tuesday to complain about a black police sergeant who was passed over for promotion by a nearly all-white assessment board.

Community support for Thomas Williams, who has been with the Aurora Police Department more than 20 years, has grown louder since top brass began speaking out to the commission on his behalf this month. They have encouraged Williams to challenge a system that they say makes it difficult to diversify the department in a city where race relations are strained.

But commission chairman Richard Brown refused to open the floor for public comments.

"I have been lax about how I do this, and it has come back to bite me," Brown said.

In recent meetings, black community members and the department's top cops have come down on the commission for not making diversity a recruiting priority.

"Does that mean I can't speak either," an incredulous Police Chief Daniel Oates asked Tuesday.

"Yes," Brown said, explaining that a city attorney had advised him to refrain from allowing comments from people not listed on the agenda.

Said Oates before storming out of the meeting: "This is forced and artificial, Richard. This is unfortunate."

Oates said that if he had been allowed to speak, he would have recommended that the commission start videotaping the oral segments of the promotions tests so they can be independently reviewed.

Williams received the top scores in the first three parts of a four-part testing process for the promotion. It wasn't until his oral exam, which calls for candidates to appear in person before the eight-member assessment board, that his score dropped.

The commission has reviewed the scores and determined that Williams indeed failed his oral presentation, scoring 44 percent, compared with the highest score of 92 percent, said Terry Kulbe, administrator for the Civil Service Commission.

"We basically found there wasn't any bias in the system," Kulbe told the commission.

But Williams and his bosses questioned that conclusion, especially because Williams, who has a master's degree in criminology, teaches college classes on community policing, which was the topic of the oral presentation.

Williams said he is "strongly considering legal action in light of the Civil Service Commission's denial of any biases in their scoring."

He and the four other sergeants who took the promotions test have been invited to meet Tuesday with the company that administered it to receive verbal explanations of their results.

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