FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Just weeks after taking over as Fort Lauderdale’s new top cop, Patrick Lynn has promoted four veteran officers who filed federal discrimination complaints six months ago. The officers claim they were passed over for promotion by former Chief Larry Scirotto because they had the wrong skin color or were the wrong gender.
The officers — one white woman, two white men and one Hispanic man — had no inkling they were being promoted until the chief announced it on Wednesday, said attorney Tonja Haddad-Coleman, who represents the four officers.
“We won,” Haddad-Coleman said in an email to the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday. By Thursday, she was singing a different tune.
“They were promoted,” Haddad-Coleman said of her clients. “I think that is a victory. I definitely consider that a win. But it’s not over.”
That’s partly because the police union challenged the promotions the very next day, less than 24 hours after they were announced.
The promotions were “a shock” to the rank and file, union attorney Gene Gibbons said.
“Under the collective bargaining agreement, the city is required to have the union involved in that conversation. And they haven’t done that,” he said Thursday. “The city has just ignored the union and moved forward without any input from the Fraternal Order of Police. This is the first time I’ve seen this and I’ve been doing this for over 18 years. It tells me that the city either has zero respect for the union or they’re incompetent — or both.”
The Sun Sentinel reached out to several sources Thursday who declined to return phone calls and/or emails, including City Attorney Alain Boileau; Police Chief Patrick Lynn, who took over the department on April 4; City Manager Chris Lagerbloom and police union President Scott Moseley.
On Thursday, Haddad-Coleman said she has no plans to close the complaints she filed in October with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of her clients: Lt. Kimberly Maus and Sgts. Richard Fortunato, Luan Malushi and Francisco Vetancourt. Maus is being promoted to captain and the three sergeants are being promoted to lieutenants, effective May 15.
“There’s still an EEOC complaint and we’re not closing it,” Haddad-Coleman said. “We are not dismissing our charge of discrimination with the EEOC.”
In an email sent to the city on Thursday at 7:36 a.m., Gibbons urged the city to pause long enough to meet with the union to iron out concerns “before it is too late.”
In the email, Gibbons notes that Haddad-Coleman’s clients were promoted to newly budgeted positions in an attempt to resolve the EEOC complaint, a move taken outside of the normal promotion process spelled out in the union’s collective bargaining agreement.
In addition, the four officers named for promotion are not on any legitimate promotional eligibility list, Gibbons said. The promotions were not done under a court order or by a ruling of the EEOC, he added.
“The city cannot just unilaterally promote FOP bargaining unit members and exclude the FOP for the process,” Gibbons wrote in his email to Fort Lauderdale. “The city has chosen to intentionally exclude the FOP, a very unwise move. I hope the city will pause what it is about to unilaterally do and sit down, discuss and work through these very serious issues with the FOP before it is too late.”
On Thursday, Gibbons told the Sun Sentinel he is still waiting to hear back from city officials.
“The city is doing what they want to do,” he said. “They’re not even talking to us. They think we’re going to go away. It’s very bizarre.”
On Thursday, Haddad-Coleman said all four of her clients were taken aback when they learned they were being promoted. So was she.
“The city has made zero attempt to negotiate anything with me on behalf of my clients,” Haddad-Coleman said. “They made the unilateral decision to promote them and informed [us] yesterday. I got an email from the city attorney. It was definitely a surprise. It’s very rare for a city or any employer to recognize and admit there was wrongdoing.”
Haddad-Coleman pointed to the fact that Scirotto was fired on March 3, six days after a report was sent to City Hall by an outside attorney who investigated claims the chief was making promotions based on race, gender or sexual orientation.
The attorney, former prosecutor Gregg Rossman, was hired to handle the inquiry in November, a month after the four Fort Lauderdale officers filed complaints with the EEOC.
“I think the fact that the chief got fired and my clients were promoted tells you everything you need to know,” Haddad-Coleman said. “The Rossman report was proof that the chief was discriminating.”
Scirotto, the department’s first biracial gay chief, declined to comment Thursday.
Mayor Dean Trantalis said he was unaware of the turmoil surrounding the promotions until getting a call from the Sun Sentinel on Thursday.
“You are the first person to tell me this,” he told a reporter.
Trantalis, who had high hopes for Scirotto when he was hired in August, defended him on Thursday.
“Chief Scirotto never said they were not qualified,” Trantalis said of the four officers who filed EEOC complaints. “He clearly indicated all the candidates were qualified and made the selection based on having the department be more representative of the community.”
In addition to Haddad-Coleman’s clients, Lynn announced Wednesday that he was promoting three officers to sergeant. Union officials are challenging those promotions as well because of what they call a flawed process that included a retired judge they say was not qualified to assess candidates.
“We have a problem with the list because it’s completely flawed,” Gibbons said. “To fix it, we’d have to redo the whole assessment. Now they’re making promotions off a flawed list that we challenged.”
Haddad-Coleman’s clients were told they’d receive back pay and seniority dating back to the original date of promotion, a huge perk that will give them an advantage over officers whose promotions came after theirs when it comes to choosing shifts and days off.
“The longer you’re tenured in the job the more preference you gain,” Gibbons said. “When a bid comes up and there’s one slot left for Saturday and Sunday off, who’s going to get it? Gene who has 20 years on or Harry who has two years on? It’s a nice fair way if you go by seniority. If you don’t like working the graveyard shift, you can bid the day shift in front of the junior people.”
