Woman fails test for LEO.....sues city

[Steve in PA]

Woman fails test........sues city
http://www.citizensvoice.com/site/n...id=455154&rfi=6

A civil lawsuit that could cost Wilkes-Barre taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars is expected to begin in about a month.


U.S. Magistrate Judge Malachy Mannion has issued Mayor Thomas McGroarty a verbal order to schedule an executive meeting of city council to discuss the ramifications of the suit.

The mayor scheduled that session for Monday, April 21, at 6 p.m. If held, it would be to discuss pending litigation and closed to the public and media.

On Thursday night, McGroarty outlined some specifics of the federal suit, which was filed against the city's police civil service commission.

The mayor said the defendant, Mary Moran-Yatko, claimed a portion of the civil service's physical exam for prospective police officers was discriminatory against women. The defendant was disqualified from being a city officer after she failed to climb over a 6-foot high wall.

Her suit argued the wall-climb was geared towards upper body strength, which is more prevalent in men than women.
Moran-Yatko is seeking back pay since 1994, when she took the physical, and other damages.


So........some cop (male or female) who is on the job........who has passed this test........who is on a call has to wait for someone other than this female to help......since she can't haul her butt through a window to come help him.

True, the responding cop could be this female, or a male who didn't make it through the window. My point is that someone will be relying on her to back them up......and no back up arrives.......while she stands around outside.

The best thing is that she is an aerobics instructor/fitness guru....who failed the test.....oh boo hoo. Last year she said that climbing through a window is not a relevant part of police work. Ohhh.....a wannabe now knows about police work and what the job is like. Guess I should tell her how many windows or walls I've climbed through while on the job.

Every police dept that I tested for has some kind of window or wall you must scale. I've taken the test for the dept she tried for and passed every time. I've seen several guys fail the wall test too. Guess they'll be suing for a job now.

Another point she made was how the women have mor elower body strength....guess to make the playing field even the females should have to run faster and farther than the males........we wouldn't want to discriminate against the males now would we.

I'm not against females in law enforcement......I've known several and they hold their own.......but each one of them has hauled their butt through a window or over a wall, in addition to passing all the other tests.

I feel sorry for the city if she gets a job here........glad I don't work for it. I can see it now..........she'll be standing around while everyone else is climbing through windows or running through backyards climbing fences and walls......saying....."well, thats not part of police work"!!!!


:banghead:

 

[Bruce H]

Well cut her in half if she wants to be hyphenated, then she can help her silly self over the wall. The sad part is she will win and get somebody killed. I just hope I have enough ammo loaded when the balloon goes up.

 

[cordex]

Key sign of a frivolous lawsuit:

Moran-Yatko is seeking back pay since 1994, when she took the physical, and other damages.

9 years of "back pay" for a job she was unqualified to perform?

My rear end.

 

[Standing Wolf]

Yeah, and I want to be a rocket scientist, too, never minding that I barely made it through high school trigonometry.

 

[Hkmp5sd]

Lowering the qualifications for any class/sex/racial/physical group of people, whether physical or mental, only decreases the efficiency of the entire organization and causes friction between the rank and file over the newly hired/promoted token.

 

[CatsDieNow]

Lowering the qualifications for any class/sex/racial/physical group of people...

Exactly. She's not helping other women out in any way, in fact she's making it worse.

After I had been at my new job for about six months, I found out that the company had a "goal" for 50-60% of new hires to be women or minorities - they actually pay a premimum for them. I make more money than would an equally qualified man. I found this out during an all-hands team meeting where I was the only new hire and woman in the room. Everyone was looking at me; I have never been so embarrassed in my life. I had all of my accomplishments and hard work tarnished in less than five minutes. I don't think anyone in the room believed that I was hired solely because of my gender, but I guess no one, including me, will ever know for sure.
This kind of stuff really snarks me off.

 

[clem]

"Lowering the qualifications for any class/sex/racial/physical group of people, whether physical or mental, only decreases the efficiency of the entire organization and causes friction between the rank and file over the newly hired/promoted token."

HKmp5sd

Isn't this something like "affirmative action" that's been going on for years?

 

[Pendragon]

Ah, but the insurance company or the city will decide that the risk of losing exceeds the cost to pay her off.

She will get a nice 6 figure settlement, sign an NDA and live happily ever after.

 

[general]

Steve in PA:

I feel sorry for the city if she gets a job here........glad I don't work for it.

I'm gald I don't live there. If I needed a cop in the worst way, I would hope that this wasn't the reason one didn't show in time. Thus always...In thine ownself trust.
Personally... I wanted to be a cowboy/astronaut.(guess no backpay?)
CatsDieNow:

I had all of my accomplishments and hard work tarnished in less than five minutes. I don't think anyone in the room believed that I was hired solely because of my gender, but I guess no one, including me, will ever know for sure.

If you did well, you deserve to be there. As far as announcing the policy to the whole room in which you are the only one it applies to......that's just mean.

 

[TheeBadOne]

This happens far more often than you think. Sometimes a candidate will threaten to sue (usually a female over the above type of physical testing), frightening the agency/city/county into hiring them. I myself have never understood why they hire them, as I consider it pay now or pay later.

 

[Preacherman]

Question is, does the city employ other women officers who HAVE passed the physical fitness/capabilities test? If so, then it should be relatively easy to show the lawsuit is a load of whatever. If not, and the city has no women officers at all, then the city is probably up to its neck in it now, and rightly so.

 

[Don Gwinn]

A similar thing has happened a couple of different ways in Springfield, IL.

Two years ago, the city got into a lot of trouble because their firefighter test was "unfair." They had changed the weight of the dragging dummy from 80 lbs to 145 lbs, and women who took the test alleged that it was unfair because no one was warned ahead of time about the change so that they could train for it.

Turns out, they told all applicants several weeks before and they all had time to pile 145 lbs on a blanket and drag it around the backyard--but apparently they didn't, because a lot of people failed. It was hard to say whether that was because of the dummy, because the test was a timed event with five or six components, but there were at least two women who gave up after failing to move the dummy the required distance.

Now, I feel for these women, but what in the world makes someone who can't drag 145 lbs across a flat parking lot think she's strong enough to be a firefighter? Anyone who fails that test ought to be glad the decision was made for them.



The other case centered around race more than sex. Springfield hired an officer named Renatta Frazier, more or less because she was a black female and Springfield PD has a racism problem (they also have a "beating citizens to a pulp in bar parking lots" problem, but that's for another day.) All through her training at the State Police academy, Frazier was in trouble. She says now that she was 30-something and all grown up, so she feels she shouldn't have had to put up with the training, which was designed to humiliate children straight out of high school.
Rather than get rid of her, they assigner her a mentor officer. But he was a white male state cop, and that didn't work, so they brought in a black female Springfield cop to counsel her. She got through the training that way, over the protests of some instructors, and she was hired by Springfield PD, against the official recommendation of the academy.

She'd been on the job about two years and (it was later revealed) hated the job and the department and was on anti-depression meds when there was a call the Halloween before last. At about four in the morning, a woman reported that at least three men were outside her door attempting to break in, and threatening to rape her.

Frazier was sent to the address, but all seemed quiet outside, so she stayed in the car and drove on past. Didn't stop, didn't get out of the car, didn't knock on the door. As it turned out, the girl inside WAS raped that morning.

Here's where it gets complicated: the PD put out a guarded press release saying that Frazier was suspended pending an investigation. It turned out the rape victim was the daughter of a Springfield police officer, so there was some personal impetus there. The press reported it more or less the way I did above, implying that the girl was raped because Frazier didn't stop it by at least getting out of the car. The Police Department did not correct these reports, but they weren't quite true. Frazier actually arrived after the men had already raped the girl and left, so she couldn't actually have prevented the rape either way (another lesson on response time, by the way.)

So last fall the investigation concluded and they announced all this, and of course a firestorm followed. They had railroaded an innocent woman who was only trying to do her job! How dare they?


The lesson? They knew she was terrible in training. They had the ISP recommendation. But they hired her anyway. Then they knew she was a bad cop. They tried to get her more training and mentoring to make a good cop out of a bad cop, but it didn't work--and they didn't fire her then.

Now she looks like the victim to a lot of people and they're the bad guys because they tried to placate the percentage-watchers.

(Although they should have disclosed the truth, the PD claims its hands were tied while the investigation was ongoing. To my mind, it hardly matters if she got there before or after. If she'd arrived on the scene of a home invasion, the girl could have been bleeding to death while she sat in the car. And the fact that three rapes can be committed before the cops can get to your house at four in the morning ought to be remembered by everyone.)

 

[4v50 Gary]

6 foot wall is pretty standard and every academy I've ever seen has a requirement for the recruits to scale that wall. She could sue her way in, then she'll have to sue her way to pass the academy, and then sue to have a bodyguard to protect her from criminals who are larger and stronger than her.

Not to criticize women cops and darn if there aren't plenty who can whup me. But physical standards have a validity in law enforcement work. Expect to get into a fight as it will happen.

 

[Hkmp5sd]

Isn't this something like "affirmative action" that's been going on for years?

Yep. Don't like that either. Either you are qualified or not. If not, don't get the job. If someone else is better qualified than you, they get the job.

 

[Tamara]

The mayor said the defendant, Mary Moran-Yatko, claimed a portion of the civil service's physical exam for prospective police officers was discriminatory against women. The defendant was disqualified from being a city officer after she failed to climb over a 6-foot high wall.

Well, honey, it's this or lower all the walls and windows in town. Which strikes you as more practical?

 

[QKRTHNU]

Maybe they can pass a law that says:

"No one may engage in criminal activity unless they are unable to scale a 6-foot-wall."

Yeah, that's the ticket!

 

[TheeBadOne]

Maybe they can pass a law that says:

"No one may engage in criminal activity unless they are unable to scale a 6-foot-wall."

LMAO that was G R E A T !

 

[Steve in PA]

To answer a question.......yes, there are three other females, hired several years ago who passed the test. Guess they got a boost!!!!