Quotas and the San Francisco Police: A Sergeant's Dilemma

This article was originally prepared for a graduate course in public administration at Golden Gate University, San Francisco. It attempts to trace the immediate history of the particular lawsuit in question, to spell out some of the issues raised therein, and to place the lawsuit in a broader social...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Public administration review 1977-05, Vol.37 (3), p.276-285
Main Author: Balzer, Anthony J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil service
Defendants
Employment
Employment discrimination
Gender discrimination
Hiring
Lawsuits
Minority groups
Plaintiffs
Police
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Summary:This article was originally prepared for a graduate course in public administration at Golden Gate University, San Francisco. It attempts to trace the immediate history of the particular lawsuit in question, to spell out some of the issues raised therein, and to place the lawsuit in a broader social perspective. Many recent conditions and events have combined to increase competition for police (and many other public service) jobs. Minority group members, however one wants to define that term, are often statistically misrepresented in these desirable jobs. But the currently popular "remedy" for minority misrepresentation, quota hiring, is actually a perversion of the legitimate principle, "equality of opportunity," into what the author sees as an illegitimate principle: "equality of results." While the case at hand relates specifically to the situation in the San Francisco Police Department, the author hopes the reader will see immediate parallels to his or her own functional area. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author, a lower-level line supervisor in the SFPD. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the SFPD as a whole.
ISSN:0033-3352
1540-6210
DOI:10.2307/974823