This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Politics & Government

NAACP Admits No Direct Evidence of Discrimination in Godbold Case

Lower Merion Officer Kerry Godbold filed a discrimination complaint against the township after being passed over for promotion this Spring.

Diana Robertson, a Philadelphia NAACP paralegal who is helping steer a potential discrimination suit against Lower Merion Township, acknowledged that the prosecution has no direct evidence of racial discrimination against plaintiff Kerry Godbold, but believes there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to win if the case goes to court.

“We know that nowadays, racism is subtle,” Robertson told Patch. “What you do is look at the pattern of what somebody normally does and if they alter their behavior if African-Americans are in the mix.”

In the mix here is Kerry Godbold, an African-American and 20-year veteran of the Lower Merion Police Department who was passed over for a promotion to sergeant in March after the township claimed the promotions list he was on had expired.

Find out what's happening in Ardmore-Merion-Wynnewoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Of the three officers who were on the list, Robertson said Godbold was clearly the strongest candidate. “One officer had been skipped over twice for promotion and the other had been skipped over once. The only person really left who was qualified, who would fit the bill, was Kerry Godbold.”

“Nowadays, racism is subtle.”—Diana Robertson, NAACP paralegal

In what was widely viewed as a possible first step towards a lawsuit against the township, Godbold and his counsel, the NAACP, filed a discrimination complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission last month. If the commission green-lights a suit, Robertson says the NAACP’s argument will hinge on a challenge of the township’s interpretation of the list as expired—they believe it was two months premature—and the placement of the consequences of that interpretation in the context of the Lower Merion Police Department’s minority promotions history.

Find out what's happening in Ardmore-Merion-Wynnewoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The township has never had an African American rise to, or above, the rank of sergeant.

Robertson admits that while there is no specific aspect of the township’s police promotions process that qualifies as unequivocally discriminatory, in the absence of a satisfying explanation for why Godbold wasn’t promoted, racism seems the most sound one.

“He should have been promoted,” she said.

She might be right, said Maurice Hall, a professor of Africana Studies at Villanova University who does research on organizational structures. Hall told Patch that, even absent a smoking gun of overt discrimination, implicit racial biases can affect hiring and promotions practices in the workplace.

“I couldn’t speak specifically to Lower Merion’s process, but there is certainly a point to be made that evaluation processes have biases that can go unrecognized,” he said. “If a department has not taken very specific steps to look at whether the recruitment process and the socialization process is absolutely fair, there may be ways in which implicit bias can creep into the evaluation process.”

Liz Rogan, president of the Lower Merion Board of Commissioners, maintains that the township wasn’t discriminating, implicitly or explicitly, but that their promotions list had simply expired.

“We have a lot of open positions we want to fill in the police department, but our lists”—both promotions and hiring—”had expired,” Rogan explained.

In response to the charge of racial discrimination, over the summer the township commissioned an independent investigator to review their hiring and promotions practices. The resulting report, which was released on Sept. 6, found no evidence of such discrimination.

Robinson dismisses the report. She said that its focus was misguided, and concentrated on the township’s hiring practices (which the NAACP does not take issue with) at the expense of its promotions practices (whoch it does). The group also contends that because it was commissioned by the township, it was not a truly independent analysis.

“The individual who did that investigation is from a firm”——”that has expertise in defending federal agencies, so how independent is that?” Robertson asked.

Some sense dishonesty on both sides. A source close to the police department who requested anonymity told Patch that, in his view, Godbold was passed over not because of discrimination or the putative expiration of the list, but a reason more fundamental: money.

“It’s intentional. [Lower Merion] is saving money by not filling these positions,” he said, pointing out that the township has left numerous other police positions open, leaving the force, in his mind, under-staffed and over-extended.

The township has, at present, upward of 10 open positions on the police force, saving a substantial sum in salaries and benefits in the meantime.

Rogan rejects this analysis.

“I don’t know who said that, but it’s not the case,” she said. “We are down a lot of [police] positions at the moment, but that is because some people left. We had early retirements, for instance. Many people left and we didn’t have enough names on the list to fill all the openings. And the list expired.”

When asked why, faced with a surplus of police vacancies they wanted to fill, the board determined the list expired when other interpretations were available, Rogan was succinct.

“We trust our advisers, and their advice was that the list had expired.”

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?