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| By City, Newest First: Ohio (Cincinnati): Debra Vitt is perhaps the most visible customer service representative in the City of Cincinnati. But she's been forced to file a reverse racial discrimination complaint in a federal court due to discriminatory treatment by city manager John Shirey and two other city officials. Ms. Vitt alleges in her suit that for the past 2 years she has been subjected to harassment and taunting by 2 black supervisors in the city manager's office. Her complaints have been ignored, she said, because she is white and the supervisors are black. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Debra Vitt said City Manager John Shirey repeatedly dismissed her claims of discrimination, at one point telling her that he knows "reverse discrimination occurs, but unfortunately their side is the only one that gets heard." Another time she said that city manager John Shirey pounded on her desk with his fists and shouted "that he was CEO of the city, he made million-dollar deals and he did not have time for people like me or issues like mine." Cincinnati's EEO office was not responsive to Ms. Vitt's complaints, and deliberately stalled any meaningful investigation into her complaint, thus allowing the alleged racial harassment to continue. As apparent retirubition for filing her reverse discrimination complaint, Debra Vitt has been subjected to the following retaliation and continued harassment: An anti-white racial epithet has been carved into her desk; she has been verbally abused and browbeaten, and she has suddenly been given a poor performance review which is in marked contrast to the good-to-excellent performance reviews she had consistently received during her previous 10 years of employment with the city. She has also recently been threatened with a transfer to a less desirable job. Last Friday, August 11, 2000, Ms. Vitt filed an official complaint with the federal Equal Opportunity Commission, in the vain hope that the federal EEOC would be more responsive to her complaint of reverse discrimination than had been the Cincinnati EEO. In her federal EEOC complaint, Ms. Vitt documented the racially-motivated problems she began experiencing shortly after assuming her Cincinnati job as customer service specialist in 1998. At that time she was treated rudely by black communications officer Gina Ruffin-Moore. Ms. Vitt confronted Ms. Ruffin-Moore about her verbal abuse. In Vitt's lawsuit, she documents the fact that the black supervisor, Ms. Ruffin-Moore, acknowledged to her supervisor, Fannie Nicholes, that she had been rude to Ms. Vitt. (Fannie Nicholes is assistant to the city manager, John Shirey. Truculently, Ms. Ruffin-Moore implied that maybe the white lady (Vitt) simply resented the fact that two black women were her supervisors. Vitt's lawsuit goes on to charge that supervisor Nicholes agreed with Vitt's black supervisor, Ms. Ruffin-Moore, and said words to the effect that ""All white people are prejudiced [against black people, especially black bosses]; it's just subconscious with some. They just can't help it." David Chapman, an assistant to city manager John Shirey and EEO officer, told the Cincinnati Enquirer on Monday, 8/14/00, that the investigation into Debra Vitt's complaint is underway. He denied that EEO investigators are deliberately slowing down the investigation, and said that several individuals needed to be interviewed in order to conclude the investigation. Mr. Chapman's statements are in stark contrast to the facts alleged by Debra Vitt's federal EEOC complaint, in which she says Cincinnati EEO investigators refused to interview city manager John Shirey. Mysteriously, after Ms. Vitt was forced to file her federal EEOC complaint, the city now alleges that city manager John Shirey was actually interviewed by the Cincinnati EEO either the week of Aug. 7, 2000, or the week of July 31, 2000. Its disturbing that fact was not forthcoming until Ms. Vitt filed her federal EEOC complaint. Self-servingly, the City EEO is now using the excuse that since Ms. Vitt has filed a federal EEOC complaint his office will not proceed with its own investigation, according to Mr. Chapman. Most Cincinnati EEO investigations take less than 30 days, noted Mr. Mark Byrne, Debra Vitt's laywer. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Vitt's lawyer stated that he and Ms. Vitt have held off filing their federal EEOC complaint for months while waiting for the Cincinnati EEO to conduct its investigation. Summary of Cincinnati Foot-Dragging in Debra Vitt's Reverse Discrimination Case:
[Commentary: Do YOU think justice has been served? Has Debra Vitt's reverse discrimination complaint been treated fairly and seriously by the Cincinnati EEO office? Or is Cincinnati passing the buck and thus subjecting Ms. Vitt to many more months of degrading racial harassment while the federal EEOC repeats the anti-white foot-dragging which Cincinnati has demonstrated so ably?] (Based on the Cincinnati Enquirer Tues., Aug 15,
2000 by Robert Anglen) Ohio (Cincinnati): "A decade after a federal judge threw out affirmative-action rules for hiring firefighters, eight white Cincinnati firefighter candidates are challenging the selection process. The men have taken their complaints to city leaders, claiming reverse discrimination and saying they've been passed over for people with lower scores and women with less physical ability. "Larry Martin, 29, a suburban firefighter, scored 29th on the city's list of 157 eligible candidates for fire recruit classes from a test taken nearly two years ago. He already had been skipped over by candidates who ranked as low as 108, and he wonders why. 'To score (that high) on the list, out of maybe thousands of applicants, to me was a big accomplishment,' he said. 'Getting nowhere out of that was a big letdown.'
"Under [a 1974 affirmative action] consent decree, each recruit class was [required]
to be 40 percent black until 18 percent of the entire force was made up of minorities. The
city used two separate race-based eligibility lists to meet that [racial] goal. That
changed in 1990, when U.S. District Judge Carl Rubin ruled in favor of white firefighter
candidates who had sued the city, claiming they were unfairly barred from jobs. Judge
Rubin said the consent decree could no longer favor blacks over whites. (Cincinnati
Enquirer, 03/10/999/ by Tanya Bricking) Ohio (Columbus): Associated Press Headline: "Suit accuses police chief of promoting less qualified applicants" Text: "Columbus police Chief James Jackson is being sued by 16 officers who accuse him of being racist and sexist when he promoted a less-qualified group of officers to fill nine sergeants positions." Facts: (According to the Associated Press story)
(Excerpted from the Sept. 12, 2002 Associated Press story as published by WBNS-TV Columbus, Ohio.) Last known links: Printer friendly: Alternate link:
Ohio (Dayton): Adversity.Net Case 49: In 2002 Dayton selected William McManus as their new black chief of police over 27 year department veteran Major Barbara Temple. Major Temple was white. Shortly after the new black chief (McManus) was appointed he began a purge of white officers and Major Barbara Temple was fired. Temple sued, and won. See Adversity.Net Case 49: Dayton Ohio police reverse discrimination. Ohio (Toledo): "Two fire lieutenants will not be promoted to captain just because they are black, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled. Charles Jones and Rico Dougherty contended in a lawsuit last year that the city had denied them their right to affirmative action because they weren't promoted. "But U.S. District Judge James Carr denied the request, noting in his five-page decision that of the five black captains in 1987, one had retired and four had been promoted to battalion chief. In addition, three black lieutenants were promoted to captain; two of those have since been promoted again. 'It appears that rapid promotion to higher ranking positions, rather than discrimination, is responsible for the lack of African-American captains,' Judge Carr ruled in response to the city's request for summary judgment in the case."
"According to numbers compiled by [Chief Mike Bell], 31 of the 121 lieutenants and
captains are minorities or women. Twenty are black, seven are Hispanic, and two are Native
American. Three captains are white females, according to the same numbers."
(Toledo Blade, 01/21/99, by Robin Erb) End OHIO Police, Fire and Municipal Employees |
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