Georgia's first black police officers may take pension battle to court - AP

[Yrys]

Georgia's first black police officers may take pension battle to court

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- A "whites only" sign was still hanging on the precinct house water fountain in 1964 when James Booker joined the suburban
College Park police force. He soon learned it wasn't the only thing off limits to Georgia's new black recruits.

Until 1976, black officers were blocked from joining a state-supported supplemental police retirement fund. Today, white officers who entered the fund before that
year are taking home hundreds of dollars more every month in retirement benefits than their black counterparts.The now-retired black officers have been lobbying
hard to change that, but eight years after they began an effort to amend the state constitution and give them credit for those lost years is stalled in the Legislature.

The Georgia Constitution prohibits the state from extending new benefits to public employees after they have retired. If lawmakers don't take action in the final weeks
of the legislative session, the battle will move to the courthouse this spring, said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, an Atlanta Democrat and civil rights activist leading the
officers' campaign. "I was hoping we wouldn't have to go this route, but litigation appears to be our only option," Brooks said.

Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association, said he knows of no other state with a similar pension situation. "Only Georgia is shameless
enough to still have this out there," Hampton said. The Georgia House has twice passed an amendment resolution but it has gone nowhere in the state Senate. An
amendment requires a vote of two-thirds of each chamber as well as approval by voters.

"We can't fix everything for everybody," said state Sen. Bill Heath, chairman of the Senate Retirement Committee.Heath, a Republican, argued that making retroactive
changes to retirement benefits "opens up a can of worms and could destroy the pension system."The House Retirement Committee chairman, state Rep. Ben Bridges
-- a retired state trooper -- has no such misgivings.

Georgia's first black officers, hired in the late 1940s, entered a segregated system rife with daily humiliations. They couldn't arrest white offenders without a white officer
present. They couldn't change into uniforms at the station house -- or wear their uniforms to work -- forcing many to switch clothes in the locker room at the local black YMCA.
Some white officers ordered to partner with a black officer called in sick until they were reassigned. "It was pure hell," said former Atlanta Patrolman Johnnie P. Jones,
the only surviving member of the original class of eight black officers hired in Atlanta in 1948. "The enemy was the white police officers and the enemy was the black citizens.
We were under siege."

The numbers of black officers slowly rose in the 1950s and 1960s as the civil rights struggle raged through the South. Although the federal Civil Rights Act signed in 1964
outlawed employment discrimination, change in the ranks was slow. Officials don't dispute that participants in the police retirement plan before 1976 were almost exclusively white.

"That appears true but we weren't keeping those kinds of records," said Robert Carter, current secretary-treasurer of the Peace Officers Annuity and Benefit Fund of Georgia.
The fund supplements officers' municipal or county pensions. Officers make small monthly contributions and the state adds money collected from tickets and fines.

Booker, who worked in the College Park police force for more than three decades before he retired, said he would be pulling in an extra $770 more a month if he had been
allowed to join the fund at the beginning of his career. Instead, at the age of 76 he is still working part-time directing traffic to make ends meet.

Legislators did enact a partial remedy in 2006, passing a bill allowing current officers who were employed before 1976 to buy into the fund for those earlier years.
Only four did, Carter said. And that law didn't address the estimated 100 to 200 black officers who had already retired. Brooks, a veteran of the two-decade crusade
to remove the Confederate battle symbol from the Georgia flag, said this legislative battle is testing even his patience. "I am not hopeful," he said.

And time is running out, as some retirees have died and others are ailing.

"You wonder sometimes are they just waiting for us to all die," Booker asked.

 

[Cheshire]

It's amazing how far back into the dark ages some places still are in the deep south.

And a Black man has the opportunity to be the President of the United states in less than 10 months, and garbage like this still goes on? Simply amazing.

"America....what a country!!"

 

[Yrys]

They seem to have a clear legal right for '64 to '76 pensions that they didn't get ...
They may have better luck in the federal level...

Although the federal Civil Rights Act signed in 1964  outlawed employment discrimination, change in the ranks was slow

a little song to relive the mood...

"Black History" - Master P & Romeo (Animated Version)

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

It's amazing how far back into the dark ages some places still are in the deep south.
And a Black man has the opportunity to be the President of the United states in less than 10 months, and garbage like this still goes on? Simply amazing.

"America....what a country!!"

Its so easy to be sanctimonious, isn't it? :

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080116/jail_job_action_080116/20080116

Would you mind if an American was to scoff and insult us?

 

[helpup]

I hope he gets his full pension.  I am not a fan of affirmative action, I believe people should be merited on skills not race/creed or gender.  But stories like this and the recent "Canadian equivalent" pointed out by Bruce show that in North America ( and from personal observations Racist attitudes are prevalent in many differant forms through out the world )  We have a ways to go yet to have a level playing Field. 

I still am not a fan of affirmative action but I firmly believe everyone MUST be treated equally and fairly.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

It's amazing how far back into the dark ages some places still are in the deep south.

And a Black man has the opportunity to be the President of the United states in less than 10 months, and garbage like this still goes on? Simply amazing.

"America....what a country!!"

And Toronto is spinning the clock backwards with their black school implimentation. Simply amazing.

"Canada....what a country!!"