LITTLE ROCK — In a civil suit filed Friday in Pulaski County Circuit Court, a veteran Little Rock police commander claims the city’s police chief targeted her for retaliation after she raised concerns about the department’s promotion process for picking its new assistant chiefs.
Capt. Patrice Smith, who joined the department in 1982, said she was denied the pay increase received by other captains, and was reassigned to a “meaningless” position, after she filed a complaint over Little Rock Chief of Police Stuart Thomas’ decision to let a rival candidate for the position, and eventual winner of the position, Capt. Wayne Bewley, act as assistant chief for six months until the positions were officially filled.
A call to the department’s spokesman was not returned Sunday night.
Smith was one of six captains who applied for the position of assistant chief earlier this year.
When Thomas appointed Bewley as acting assistant chief, giving him an “unfair competitive advantage” for the position, according to the suit, Smith filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint charging that she was prevented from the opportunity because of her sex and race. Smith has been a captain for 16 years and has six years seniority over Bewley.
Once Bewley and fellow Capt. Hayward Finks were promoted as assistant chiefs, the complaint said, Smith was taken out of the department’s training division and assigned as the “Commander of Special Projects,” where she supervises one other officer while other captains command anywhere from 15to 50 officers.
“[Thomas] individually retaliated against [Smith] ... for her complaint about discrimination,” the complaint said.
The complaint, which names the city of Little Rock in addition to Thomas, Bewley and Finks, also contends that the city violated state law when it gave Bewley a six-month run for the position he and five other captains were seeking.
It also said the city’s testing procedures violated state law because they did not “make a judicially reviewable record of the structured interview” when they did not record the candidates’ oral responses to the three “raters” appointed to interview the candidates.
Smith’s complaint is not the first protest of this summer’s promotion process.
On June 12, the Black Police Officers Association, a group that represents more than 110 of the department’s 500 officers and of which Smith is a member, submitted a complaint to the city’s Civil Service Commission and challenged the integrity of the city’s promotion process.
The complaint, which called human resources officials’ approach to the promotion process “incompetent” and asserted the “perception” of favoritism, led the commission to freeze the promotion process.
After discussions between Thomas, the black officers group and the city’s human resources director, the commission eventually certified the findings of the city’s raters, which allowed Thomas to choose Bewley and Finks for the positions.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/03/2012