Nearly a year after she was passed over for assistant police chief, a Little Rock Police Department commander filed a lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court against the city and Police Chief Stuart Thomas that claims she was passed over in part because she is a woman.
Capt. Alice Fulk, head of the department’s major-crimes division, was one of six captains who completed the promotion process for the rank of assistant chief left open after the Dec. 1, 2011, retirement of Assistant Chief Carlos Corbin and the April2011 retirement of David Rowan.
But on July 28, after she received the second-highest score of the captains on the list of applicants, Thomas picked the applicant with the top score, Wayne Bewley, and the applicant with the third-highest score, Hayward Finks, for the two assistant-chief positions.
According to Fulk’s complaint, filed late Wednesday, there is a “glass ceiling” for women at the Police Department.
“[Fulk] met with [Thomas] … and was informed by him that she had been skipped over in the eligibility list,” the complaint said. “Thomas did not provide any reason for her non-selection except to state that he needed someone who [is] capable of managing at that level right then and that she was not yet there but would be soon.”
Department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis said she couldn’t comment on legal matters and said that Thomas also would decline comment.
Fulk’s attorney did not return calls for comment.
At the time of the assistant-chief promotion, only 91 of the department’s 496 officers were women and only two women were in the department’s command staff. Updated personnel information was not available Thursday.
Fulk’s complaint pointed out that Thomas has never promoted a woman to the rank of assistant chief, and that, historically, he has always picked the top-scoring applicants from the list that is certified by the city’s Civil Service Commission. By statute, though, Thomas can pick any of the top three.
Hired as an officer in 1992 and reaching the rank of captain in 2003, Fulk earned her master’s degree in human-resources management from Webster University in Little Rock in 2006.
The complaint argues that Finks was chosen over Fulk because Fulk is a woman.
“[Fulk] timely applied for and was qualified for promotion to the position of Assistant Police Chief,” the complaint stated. “A less qualified male was selected for the position.”
Fulk is the second female captain to file a lawsuit seeking to void the 2012 assistant-chief promotions.
In November, Capt. Patrice Smith, who finished fifth out of the six applicants, sued the city stating that the promotion process was flawed and even rigged.
Smith, who joined the department in 1982 and is the longest-serving captain in the department, argued that Bewley was given an “unfair competitive advantage” in the promotion process because he had spent more than six months as the acting assistant chief, a role that no one else was allowed to fill.
After Finks and Bewley were tapped for the assistant-chief posts, Smith, who is black, filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint stating that she was denied the promotion due to her race and her sex.
Her complaint also said that Thomas “retaliated” against her, transferring her as head of the training division to a “meaningless” position of heading “Special Projects,” a role that put one person under her command.
Fulk’s suit stated that by allowing Bewley to serve as acting assistant chief for more than 60 days without an “open competitive examination,” Thomas violated the state’s civil-service laws.
It also contends that the city failed to properly document the “structured interviews,” which accounted for half of the candidates’ final scores. In the interviews, candidates met with “raters” picked from other city divisions.
Both suits echoed protestations made by the Black Police Officers Association leading up to the promotions, which said the process was flawed.
Last summer, the officers group argued that the city’s human-resources department made several technical and procedural errors, including the failure to record the “structured interviews,” an omission the group said left applicants no means to appeal their scoring.
The officers group also objected to the evaluating of captains by other city officials. In past hires for assistant chief of police, the city relied on an “assessment center” in the promotion process, which brings in law-enforcement professionals from outside agencies to interview candidates.
With promotions handled in-house, officials of the black officers group argued, personal preferences, politics or reputations could jade or color any objective scoring by the city’s raters and rob candidates of promotions.
Frustration with the promotion process grew to the point where the officers group asked the Civil Service Commission not to certify the candidate rankings provided by the human-resources department.
The commission, whose job is to certify the results of assessments for candidates before they are given to Thomas, froze the lists. But two weeks later, the commission moved the list through.
Fulk’s suit asks that the court recognize that her rights under the Arkansas Civil Rights Act and that the Arkansas Civil Service Act were violated. The suit also asks the court to order that she be promoted to assistant chief and to instruct the department to award back pay.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 05/10/2013