Pigmentation “Augmentation”

Retired Michigan State Police lieutenant, now a lieutentant with the Livingston County Sherriff, Thomas Cremonte is an outspoken supporter of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI).

Cremonte, 53, says he was repeatedly passed over for promotions because of unfair policies and practices that favored women and minorities.

….

During some of that time, the State Police had a promotion system called augmentation that allowed it to include minorities and women with test scores in a second tier while considering white males only in the top one.

Cremonte sued the state, saying he was a victim of reverse discrimination. A Livingston County jury awarded him $850,000 in 1996.

The Court of Appeals overturned the judgment, and he ended up settling the case for $295,000 rather than pursue another trial.

The State Police has changed its promotional policies several times and no longer uses augmentation.

The State Police may have abandoned its “augmentation” policy, but that policy is alive and well in Michigan universities, even if it now hides under the label of “diversity.”

Say What? (8)

  1. Chetly Zarko October 9, 2006 at 1:20 am | | Reply

    John, I’m amazed you treated this story so lightly. I just blogged it before coming here, and what I found shocking was the horrid headline and then the “sidebar” arguments saying that men actually benefit from preferences. There was the usual diversity/token black to help white male get educational benefit argument, but there was also the fabricated “programs to help males in writing and behavioral issues” would be ended and male teacher outreach gone (both untrue, but the male behavioral one was brand new and I find to be offensive).

  2. Chauncey October 9, 2006 at 5:20 am | | Reply

    are black police officers better at dealing with black criminals? if so, then i don’t see anything wrong with this “augmentation” practice because most criminals in michigan are black.

  3. John Rosenberg October 9, 2006 at 9:57 am | | Reply

    So, Chauncey, you would have no problem with a community in which “most” criminals are white hiring only white policemen? Or always assigning its one or two black policemen to work only on cases where the criminal is probably black?

  4. dchamil October 9, 2006 at 12:22 pm | | Reply

    I don’t have a problem with black officers being assigned to areas with predominantly black populations, and vice versa. There will be a much smaller outcry when someone is shot to death, which will happen sooner or later.

  5. Chauncey October 9, 2006 at 2:04 pm | | Reply

    john, i wouldn’t have a problem with a scheme like that, but only if it were true that black cops deal more effectively with black criminals and white cops handle white criminals better than black cops. in this way, this “augmentation” stuff has less to do with “diversity” and more to do with good policing. plus, dchamil has a good point about charges of racism when a white cop kills a black criminal.

  6. Cobra October 10, 2006 at 8:28 am | | Reply

    Chauncey writes:

    >>>”are black police officers better at dealing with black criminals? if so, then i don’t see anything wrong with this “augmentation” practice because most criminals in michigan are black.”

    Can you cite your source for this statement? According to the Uniform Crime Statistics of 2004, most of the criminals in Michigan are white…by a LARGE margin.

    http://www.michigan.gov/documents/2004AnnualReport_140044_7.pdf

    I do agree with you that there is a problem with lethal force that appears to be alligned with the race of the alleged perpetrator.

    –Cobra

  7. superdestroyer October 10, 2006 at 9:34 am | | Reply

    Cobra,

    According the reference you cited, blacks committed 285 murder to 60 commited by whites and Hispanics (since they number of Hispanic perpretrators is 0, I assumed the state rolled them into the white column. )

    Considering that blacks are 14% of the population in Michigan, blacks commit 82% of the murders.

    I wonder how you would feel if some far right politician stated using post CY 2000 crime data as a reason that blacks should be paying “reparations” or redress to whites for all of the misery created by the lawlessness in the black community?

  8. Cobra October 10, 2006 at 5:39 pm | | Reply

    Superdestroyer writes:

    >>>”I wonder how you would feel if some far right politician stated using post CY 2000 crime data as a reason that blacks should be paying “reparations” or redress to whites for all of the misery created by the lawlessness in the black community?”

    Only if I stove-piped and cherry-picked data (tactics quite familiar to conservatives recently) to support an anti-black argument. Then of course, I would have to assume that only 345 total crimes were committed in the State of Michigan, and ignore the rest of the report that shows whites OVERWHELMINGLY commit THOUSANDS of more.

    Maybe this type of spin works on echo-chamber right winged blogs, but thank goodness “Discriminations” isn’t one of those, right?

    –Cobra

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