What color is a trusted face?

A police officer I know shared a link to a Chicago Police Department video encouraging cops to apply for the 2024 sergeants’ exam. The five-minute video was produced for internal CPD consumption, but someone posted it to YouTube.

The video begins with a stolid white-shirt, two pens snugly beside his gold star, looking directly into the camera.

“Hi, I’m deputy chief Rahman Muhammed ...” he says. “I would like to encourage all eligible members to please visit The Wire and sign up to register for this year’s sergeant examination, given May 10. CPD is looking for the next generation of dynamic leaders to help to move this great department forward. I look forward to seeing all of your enthusiastic faces on examination day.”

All of their enthusiastic faces? Really? Because as the video unfolds ... well, let’s give it a look.

“I want officers to know this goal is attainable, with hard work and dedication” says Sgt. Arshanette L. Chambers.

“I encourage you to have at least one study group. It helped me out tremendously,” says Sgt. Enrique Martinez.

Six more officers urge hard work. To an outsider, it’s an unexceptional piece of management propaganda. So what’s the trouble? Let’s slide over to Second City Cop, an unofficial, relentlessly toxic Chicago police blog, and tune into the chatter:

“The only white is the shirt.”

“Not one Caucasian in that mentor group. ... This is very insulting and straight up racist. This is the new city of Chicago, unbelievable. They do not even try to hide the total hatred for the Caucasian police officers.”

“Irish need not apply.”

“If you’re a white stereotypical male of Irish/Italian/Slavic [descent], the city no longer needs you.”

There are over 300 more, but you get the idea.

Sun-Times file photo

Many remarks are blunt, bordering on cruel — lots of snark on the weight of the brass in the video. But they also reflect a reality as true in roll call as it was in kindergarten: It hurts to be left out. Particularly regarding job promotion. I asked CPD whether the racial makeup of the video was intentional.

“The internal video featured supervisors encouraging all qualified members of the Chicago Police Department to apply for the upcoming sergeants’ exam,” News Affairs explained, dodging the question. “The role of a sergeant is an essential position within the Department and an important opportunity for the professional development of our sworn members. We continue to encourage all qualified members ready to take this next step in their careers to apply.”

Maybe I should make their case for them. Chicago is 30% Black; only 22% of CPD is, and just 16% of sergeants. Must they tuck a token white face in their internal video? Is that really necessary?

Apparently so, in some quarters. The biggest fiction floated in the academy is that there are no white or Black police officers, that everybody is blue. Uh-huh. Given how bent out of shape some officers are at not seeing themselves reflected in this video, that isn’t the case.

Frustration vibrates off the comments, particularly directed toward “merit” promotions — which some see as a cut-to-the-front-of-the-line dodge around the test, permanently blemishing officers who didn’t make the grade. (Others see the test itself as skewed to favor whites.)

My cop buddy called merit standards “embarrassingly low” and wondered, in an email, why the department leans so heavily on scores in the first place.

“The Chicago Police Department only uses a single data point — a promotional exam — to determine leadership potential within the Department,” he writes. “Annual performance reviews, physical fitness standards, marksmanship ability, award history, discipline history ... are not factored.”

That isn’t how successful organizations promote employees. Each candidate is sized up as an individual, succeeding or failing on their own merits.

Pretty to think so.

The bottom line is there are only so many promotions, only so many chairs when the music stops, with too many bottoms trying to crowd into them. People use what leverage they can, and inclusivity carelessly applied can end up just another trick to keep out the wrong kind of person.

Or as I like to say, I’m all for a more inclusive world, so long as I can still be part of it.

“Officers need a trusted face,” Deputy Chief Migdalia Bulnes says on the video. “And you can be that trusted face.”

Can they? Maybe yes, maybe no. It shouldn’t matter what color that face is, when determining whether it is to be trusted or not, promoted or not. But it still does, obviously.

Sun-Times file photo