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ACLU, Pittsburgh settling minority police hiring lawsuit

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The city of Pittsburgh will introduce measures meant to boost minority police hiring in settling a discrimination lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union three years ago.

The city has denied discriminating, but Mayor Bill Peduto has said he'd like to boost minority hiring since taking office in January 2014.

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The ACLU said 23 of 530 officers hired by the city since 2001 have been black, even though the city's population is about 26 percent black.

The city has said that's not by design and that the plaintiffs the ACLU used to make its case had "extremely weak" claims, including one man with three warrants for traffic citations and a spotty work record when he was rejected.

In the end, the ACLU and the city agreed that disparate hiring practices for more than a year have produced an imbalanced police force.

Currently, 85 percent of the Pittsburgh Police Department is white and 13 percent is African-American. City Solicitor Lourdes Sanchez-Ridge vowed those numbers will change to reflect a more diverse department.

"The whole hiring process may have had an adverse effect on African-Americans,” she said.

As part of the lawsuit settlement, five prior African-American applicants turned away by Pittsburgh police were awarded a total of nearly $1 million. The agreement also approved $600,000 for lawyer fees that were paid using city tax dollars.

Peduto and the Black Political Empowerment Project are now urging African-Americans to apply for police positions as soon as possible.

Anyone who wishes to apply may so by visiting the department's website by CLICKING HERE.

The application deadline for the next academy class is May 11.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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