Graham v Municipality of Anchorage #6 - Test Makers Lack Certification

We're starting to get into the details.  Some might think "This seems minor" for some of these posts, but I hope to explain why they aren't minor.  But if you don't agree with me,  I'd also point out that a pattern of minor issues can collectively become a much more serious issue.

In this post I'm reporting the point that Jeff Graham's attorney made in court:  that the people who designed the training, the tests, and the grading procedures didn't have the training or the certification to do it right.

In court, Jeff Graham's attorney, Jeff Jarvi, gave Chad Richardson, the person in charge of the engineer academy (engineer is the step above a basic fire fighter and the academy is the training and testing program to promote to an engineer) a copy of his Fire Service Instructor Certificate and asked him to read off what level the certification was.  Chad Richardson read it:  Level I.  He was then asked what the difference between Level I and Level II was.  He didn't know.  He was then asked to read the above version of how the state certifying board distinguishes them.  Here's what Richardson read in court: 

From the State of Alaska Department of Public Safety (p. 3 of 16)

 AFSC Fire Service Instructor Certification Levels: 
Instructor I: (NFPA 1041 2012 ed., 3.3.2.1): An individual who has demonstrated the knowledge and ability to deliver instruction effectively from a prepared lesson plan, including instructional aids and evaluation instruments; adapt lesson plans to the unique requirements of the students and authority having jurisdiction; organize the learning environment so that learning is maximized; and meet the record-keeping requirements of authority having jurisdiction.  

Instructor II: (NFPA 1041 2012 ed., 3.3.2.2): An individual who has met the requirements for FSI Level I qualifications, and has demonstrated the knowledge and ability to develop individual lesson plans for a specific topic including learning objectives, instructional aids, and evaluation instruments; schedule training sessions based on overall training plan of authority having jurisdiction; and supervise and coordinate the activities of other instructors.  

If you missed the bold above, Level I is qualified to give training and tests someone else has designed.  You need Level II to create the training and the testing (including how the tests are graded.)

Jarvi did the same with Casey Johnson who prepared the exam.    And current Deputy Chief Jodie Hettrick who was then the new head of all training at the AFD.  They all only had Level I certification.  While I can understand the difficulty of coming into a new situation when the academy had already been planned, one thing Jodie Hettrick could have done in her initiation period was to check the certifications of the two in charge of the academy.  She had, after all, been in  charge of the state certification program  just before taking the job in Anchorage.  

Why does this matter?

First and foremost, the people in charge of testing didn't have the knowledge needed to create a valid and reliable exam and exam process necessary for a system based on merit principles, as required by  the MOA Charter at Section 5.06(c). 

Second, it undermines the credibility of the AFD's claims in court about how professional the fire department is.  The people preparing the exam didn't have the training or certification to do their jobs right.  There are also certifications for what different levels of paramedics can and cannot do.  Several people testified to not being able to perform certain functions because you needed a higher certification to perform it.  Are people ignoring those certifications too?  I suspect not, simply because they see that as their primary function, while they might see testing as 'merely' administrative.  I don't know for sure.  

Third, it raises questions about integrity, the area that Jeff Graham was marked down on, just enough in his oral exam, for him to fail to qualify for promotion.  I'll get into that matter later, but I want people to remember this as one of number of questions about integrity that make the judgment of Graham's integrity seem hypocritical and which I'm sure the jury didn't miss.  

On August 4, at the end of the MOA's defense, Deputy Chief Hettrick was called back to the stand by the MOA attorney and asked questions about the lack of proper certification.  
It was unfortunate, she told the court.  That State of Alaska didn't offer training in Anchorage for a number of years.  But it turns out there were people at AFD who had been certified at Level II when there still was training available in Anchorage.  

Jeff Jarvi, Graham's attorney, asked why people didn't go to Juneau or Outside for training, and Hettrick said it depended on available travel funds.  He then pointed out that Casey Johnson (who  created the exams)  had been allowed to testify at the trial out of sequence so he could attend a non-critical conference in North Carolina. That's four years since the exam and they still haven't gotten training.  

Below are some of my typed notes in the courtroom, so they aren't verbatim but close. 

MOA Attorney Monica Elkinton  "Are you saying that between 1996 and 2012 courses weren't offered?"
Hettrick:  Two small groups and no one from Anchorage took it.  There are no state statutes that require certification.  Local government makes that decision.  For police they have statutes.  There are recommendations, but without the instructor program, state couldn't do that. 
Elkinton:  Sounds like the authority having jurisdiction can prescribe what to do.  
Hettrick:  Yes

So, she's saying without a Municipal statue requiring training people to proper certification, it's ok if unqualified people make up the exams and grading procedures.

When it was Jeff Jarvi's turn to cross examine.

Jarvi:  Chief Dennis was a certified Level 2 right?  
Hettrick:  Yes
Jarvi:  Were there others?
Hettrick:  We have, I believe, less than 10.  
Jarvi:  There are others [with Level II Certification]?
Hettrick:  Yes
Jarvi:  Did they travel Outside to take the exam?
Hettrick:  No, they got it before 1996, but they can have them renewed.  The other half of that group attended the course we did in 2016.  . . . 
Jarvi:   We heard that Dennis did his in Juneau and Casey Johnson [Who created the test but was only certified at Level I] was accommodated in this trial to go to a conference in North Carolina?
Hettrick:  Yes.  


I would also note here - it's difficult to find the perfect place to put everything because some facts relate to more than one point, such as Casey Johnson's descriptions of how he himself had prepared for his own promotion exam.  MOA attorney Elkinton made one of her key arguments in the case that Graham didn't pass the test because he didn't study hard enough.*  To prove that point she asked various other people how hard they studied. 

Casey Johnson, in answering Elkinton's questions, said he studied many hours every day for months and months.  It was important for him to know everything.  I'd note that there was no real way to verify how much time he actually spent other than his word.  There were logs of people attending academy sessions or working with others in their stations, but not independent reading and studying.  

I raise this because Casey Johnson also said that training had become his passion.  Yet, if he was so dedicated to studying and memorizing as much as possible so he could pass the exams and do his job well, how is it that he didn't make sure he got the Level II Fire Safety Instructor training?  How is it that he didn't know about validity which was discussed in some detail in the national Fire Safety Instructor Training manual?  

*I do have to mention that Jeff Graham passed the written test and the practical test comfortably. So apparently he studied enough for those exams.  It was the highly subjective oral exam that he didn't pass. By one point.  I'll got into much more detail about what was wrong with that exam in future posts.  

Graham v MOA #5: A Much Better Overview Of Why This Case Is Important

Graham v MOA - Overview of Why It’s Important

[This is an overview to explain what I see as a major problem.

MOA = Municipality of Anchorage AFD = Anchorage Fire Dept

 My evidence in this post is minimal.  This series of posts will offer detailed evidence.]

1. There was a wrongdoing.  Jeff Graham was intentionally and unfairly denied promotion.   This was proven in court to the satisfaction of the jury.  
2. The problem is structural and individual.
1. The exam process did not follow the MOA Charter requirement that it comply with ‘merit principles’.  Instead the oral exam (particularly) was so subjective that graders could give whatever score they wanted.  The only remaining evidence was the sketchy notes of the graders.  No recordings, audio or video.  This subjective exam was abused to prevent Jeff Graham from promoting.
2. The exam was part of a good-old-boy system that demanded loyalty and punished those who didn't toe the line.
3. The wrong doing was aggravated by the response to Graham’s protest of the exam.  It was not taken seriously, there was no investigation.  Constructive critiques of the exam by two other firefighters were also ignored.
4. In court, evidence was presented (and not refuted by the Municipality) that the head of the training academy said he would never let Jeff Graham promote.

 ******************************************

After Jeff Graham was told he had failed the oral exam, he filed a complaint.  The complaint was never followed up on by AFD beyond a quick rejection.  In addition, two other fire fighters also filed more generalized constructive critiques of the exams that also were ignored. 

The correct response, in 2012,  to Graham’s complaint about the exam would have been to look into the complaint, to look at the exam.  Anyone with professional testing and training knowledge and experience would have recognized the problem with the test immediately.  

Another correct response (given AFD demographics - about 2% female and about 85% white) would have been to seriously examine why the demographics are so different from Anchorage demographics.  They could have, for example, hired objective outside experts to meet with people of color and women in the department to find obstacles to entry and promotion so that more underrepresented groups could get into and promote within the system.  

Instead of investigating and correcting the problem, the department saw Jeff Graham as the problem and the department pulled all its forces together to fight him when he got no response and finally sued the MOA.  Organizations count on their greater resources to keep people like Graham from taking them to court.  But Jeff Graham felt seriously wronged and wanted to correct the injustice he had suffered.  

Why did this happen?

1. People in charge of testing and promotion were not qualified.  There is a state certification program. The test makers only had Level 1 certification and thus were not certified to make a test, only to administer a test created by someone with Level 2 certification.
2. Accountability systems - like the Human Resources Department - did not do their work to insure the exams complied with merit principles.
3. The system has aspects of a good old boys system where if you fit in with the crowd and you stay quiet and loyal, you might get ahead.  This is not unusual, and we are currently seeing nationally the consequences of such systems in the sexual assault scandals.  If people are afraid to speak up, wrongs go on forever.  

Therefore, the highly subjective oral exam allowed the good old boys to select who they wanted to promote and in Graham's case, keep out the ones they didn't want to promote.  And this promotion exam was the only passage way up the ladder from the position of fire fighter.  

Why should you believe what I say here?  Lots of reasons.

1. My expertise.  I have academic training and practical experience in the field. I have a PhD in public administration, with a masters level specialization in personnel management.  I worked as special assistant to the director of Employee Relations at the MOA for two years (1982-84).  I was chair of the University of Alaska Anchorage grievance committee for two years and I was later the campus and statewide grievance rep for my faculty union. I sat on numerous search committees.  I taught public personnel administration for 30 years.  I’ve also published in this field.
2. My access to the case - I served as an expert witness for the plaintiff.  This allowed me to see much of the documentation of the testing and other activities.  I also attended the trial so I was able to hear the evidence offered by the MOA.  
3. The demographics of the Anchorage Fire Department compared to a) the rest of the MOA and b) the population of Anchorage are abysmal.  The AFD - according to the deposition of the Deputy Chief - has about 2% women and about 85% whites.
4. A superior court jury, after a three week trial, found the MOA guilty of bad faith and unfair treatment in Jeff Graham’s case.  They awarded him $660,000.  (The judge later approved additional legal fees.)
5. A fire fighter eyewitness testified at the trial that the head of the engineer promotion and testing academy told him and some others that “As long as I’m in charge of promotion, Jeff Graham will never promote.”  The city did not refute this testimony in court.  
6. The PowerPoint used to prepare fire fighters for the oral peer review covered slides which point out - unintentionally - some of the problems with the test:
1. “Is This A Popularity Contest?”  - they say they talked about this to dispel rumors, but obviously the rumors must have been pervasive enough that they felt the need to officially address them.  Their proof that it wasn’t?  They simply asserted it wasn’t. And blamed sore losers who'd failed the exam for the rumors.
2. Candidates were told to expect ‘skeletons’ to be brought up at the oral exam.  I'd note the MOA has disciplinary procedures with proper investigations for dealing with behavior that violates MOA regulations.  There were no disciplinary issues with Jeff Graham.  The promotion exam is not the proper place to raise unfounded and unproven "skeletons" against people. 
3. Candidates were told to prepare ‘nuggets’ or stories about themselves that would prove their character and that the nuggets could be ‘irrelevant’ to the job of fire fighter.  I'd note again, that the merit principles require that all criteria for selection and promotion be directly job related and predictive of success on the job.  
7. The oral exams were not validated even though the national fire safety instructor training manual the department uses says that high impact exams such as promotion exams should be validated professionally.  
8. Merit principles require tests that predict who will be good at the job, or what is technically known as 'valid.'   A valid test in this case would mean test takers who score higher will be more successful engineers and those who score lower will be less successful.  There are technical ways to validate a test.  Another key factor is reliability - that the conditions of the test - location, time, graders, etc. - don't bias the outcome.  Tests need people with technical training to ensure a test is valid and reliable.    A number of key people, including the test makers, were unable in depositions to explain:
1. merit principles
2. validity
3. reliability
9. Aside from not being validated, the oral exams were so obviously subjective that they allowed graders great leeway.  There are too many serious problems with the exams to address them here.  But I will in other posts.

As I said at the beginning, a wrongdoing happened and was compounded by the fire department uniting to fight Jeff Graham instead of investigating the problem professionally.  They strongly supported the people who caused the problem and fought against the victim of the problem.  The dynamics of this are the same as the dynamics that have kept so many women (and men) from reporting sexual assaults and even rape.  Fear of retribution kept many fire fighters silent about problems, even though they signed statements that required them to report any violations of the integrity of the exams.  

Thus closing this particular case doesn’t solve the problem.  It’s a systemic problem that still exists.  

Remedies

1. The most basic remedy already exists.  In fact the MOA Charter requires it be used. The Charter requires the application of merit principles in all personnel decisions.  Unfortunately, no one in the fire department involved in the case knew anything about merit principles.  Thus, the first recommendation is to train all the top level executives and all the employees involved in personnel actions where decisions are made about employees (selection, promotion, discipline, etc.) in merit principles and how to apply them.   
2. The MOA needs to hire enough professionals skilled in testing, to 
1. review selection and promotion testing in all departments to be sure tests are valid and reliable and there is accountability if they are not 
2. develop new testing procedures in those departments where tests are not valid and reliable, starting with those most out of compliance
3. train relevant people in the departments 
4. have professionals investigate complaints and suggestions about testing procedures
5. establish procedures to record all oral exams
3. Get demographic data for all departments to determine how close the MOA reflects the demographics of the working age population of Anchorage.
1. This should include age, gender, ethnicity, at a minimum, at all levels of each department
2. Departments below a to-be-determined percent of the general population demographics must develop plans for making their departments more welcoming and for developing pools of qualified candidates for future openings - if necessary, this could use the UAA ANSEP model where recruitment goes as far as preparing  high school students to develop the skills needed in key areas.  
4. The merit principles required in the MOA Charter need to be resuscitated by
1. extensive training of employees and the public on what merit principles are and how they work,
2. reviewing how many current executive level positions should actually be civil service positions with civil service protection from arbitrary firing.
5. Departments need to be much more open to their employees’ suggestions and complaints.  If necessary this means publicizing the role of the ombudsman office more and increasing the ombudsman staff skilled in administrative investigation.  Or setting up an investigation team in Human Resources.
1. This includes the legal department, which should be reviewing the meaning of ‘duty to client’ when they are government employees.  Is their duty to the employee in the department who has the authority to call them in?  Is it to the MOA as a whole?  Is it to the public?  What should they do when these duties conflict?  If the legal department had considered the fairness of the system and what happened to Jeff Graham instead of whether they thought they could beat a discrimination case, this never would have happened.  I'd note this case followed closely a discrimination case in the Police Department that the MOA also lost. Department heads who have done wrong or have allowed wrong to be done on their watch, shouldn’t be able to use the MOA attorneys to cover up their mistakes and persecute employees who are the victims of the wrong doing.  
6. It would also be nice to promote Jeff Graham.  He actually passed the test back in 2008, but a day or two later he was told he hadn’t been eligible to take the test.  It’s true he hadn’t been a fire fighter for the required five years, but he had been a mechanic in the fire department for eight years (and the duties greatly overlap with engineer)  and the HR department and Fire Department waived the requirement because of ‘equivalency’ as they did for other fire fighters.  And in 2012 he passed the written and practical tests with high scores.  But a third exam - the subjective oral exam - was added.  If you fail any one of the three exams, you can’t promote.  Graham failed the oral exam by one point after a ‘skeleton’ in the form of a rumor he’d never heard about before was sprung on him in one question.  (Each question had about four minutes to be addressed.) [UPDATE May 21, 2018:  Jeff retook the exams recently and passed.  That puts him on a list of people who will be promoted if engineer positions come open in the next two years.  Read more here.]

Jeff Graham initially filed a racial and age discrimination complaint.  Those are hard to prove.  It was the only legal grounds he was aware of for such a complaint.  He didn't know anything about the merit principles in the Charter.  The MOA claimed there was no racial discrimination, but in the trial, these other issues came out and the jury found the MOA violated its obligation of good faith and fair treatment.  

The beauty of the merit principles is that they protect everyone from discriminatory practices - whites as well as people of color, men as well as women.  They require tests to, as much as possible, discriminate solely on whether someone is likely to be successful on the job.  

My Goal

My goal in these posts is to raise awareness of the problems that this case has raised.  It got almost no media coverage and many of the issues are 'invisible' in that they are very detailed issues of policy and administration.  I hope to be able to make them visible and explain them and their significance in these posts.  

Ultimately I hope the MOA will seriously review the internal structures that increase the likelihood that employees will be treated fairly, like the merit principles in the charter require. Hiring and promoting employees based on their qualifications for the job and not their connections, generally leads to a more effective and efficient government.  So does an administration that takes complaints seriously instead of punishing the complainers.  

This is the overview.  The other posts will fill in the details.  As I post them, I'll add links to them here.  

You can see an index of all my posts about this case here - or at the Graham v. Municipality of Anchorage tab just below the "What Do I Know?" banner on top of the blog.  

Graham v MOA #4: Some Media Coverage, Finally

Casey Grove reported about the trial on APRN (it's dated 12/19/17 online).  His piece begins:

"The municipality of Anchorage has paid one of its firefighters more than three-quarters of a million dollars after his successful lawsuit against the fire department. 

It’s the second large civil award this year the municipality has paid to a public safety employee, after two police officers won $2.7 million last summer in a lawsuit over racial discrimination."

The dollar amount is different from what I reported back in August because Casey has added in the lawyers fees while I only had what the jury awarded Graham at the end of the trial.

It's been frustrating that, besides this blog, I'm unaware of any other media coverage of the case aside from this report and an earlier one by Casey back in April.  Obviously the MOA is happy that this is not covered and Graham's attorney doesn't feel it is professional to seek out publicity.  I've followed his lead here.

That said, I'd note that Casey learned about the case from me last April at the Alaska Press Club conference.  Casey had given an interesting talk on covering court cases which included different ways to get information on cases.  Afterward I mentioned one he hadn't mentioned - depositions.  Jeff Jarvi (Graham's attorney) had told me that depositions were open to the public.  The only problem was that the public doesn't have any way of knowing when they are held and who is being deposed.  I didn't know that before this case.  Casey asked how I knew this and I told him I was involved in a case, then asked me about the case I was involved in and I reluctantly told him. He looked it up and called the attorneys for both sides.  Jeff Jarvi questioned Casey about how he found out about the case, and like a good reporter, Casey said he couldn't divulge his sources.  I know that because attorney Jarvi told me about Casey's call and asked me if I had been Casey's source.

So why am I telling you this?   First, I think people should know about how the media work.  I didn't intend to tell Casey about the case, but as he pressed, I had no reason not to tell him the name of the case.
Second, and more importantly, is that this case was below the radar of Anchorage media. Even though it ended in the jury finding for the firefighter to the tune of $660,000.  And as Casey reports it was the second major case the MOA lost in 2017 - the first one involved the police department.

How many other stories are we missing?  This was a case where the jury, after three weeks of trial, found that the Municipality of Anchorage had breached its contractural duties of good faith and fair treatment.  That's a pretty big deal in my opinion.  And if it had been settled back in 2012 when Graham initially complained to the department of the unfairness, it could have easily been handled internally.  And, as I hope to explain in this series of posts, this was not simply about Jeff Graham. He was one of the few foolhardy enough or stubborn enough or mistreated enough  to stand up to the, yes, good old boy system in the fire department.

My Reaction To The Story Itself

It's hard to cover a lengthy trial that you didn't attend.  I salute Casey for making the effort.  You can read, or listen to the whole story yourself, but I did want to pull out this quote from  Anchorage Fire Department Deputy Chief Jodie Hettrick:

“It was a little frustrating for our side not to know exactly what they [the jury] felt that we did wrong,” Hettrick said. “Because we want to treat our employees fairly and equally and make sure that they don’t feel the department is doing something wrong. We want to fix things. It’s just hard to do that when you don’t have all the details.”
Hettrick said the oral exams are very similar to a job interview for any employer, and the fire department uses a scoring system for each question.

This is more than a little disingenuous.  It's the jury's job to determine the verdict.  In this case the jury wasn't asked if the MOA was "guilty" or "not guilty."  Instead, the jury had a series of yes/no questions that were finally agreed on by the two attorneys with the judge, as best as I can tell, being the final arbiter of what the jury instructions would be.  It isn't the jury's job to tell the MOA how Jeff Graham was mistreated.  It was their job to answer those yes/no questions.  And to calculate a monetary remedy.

I wish Casey had asked her if she had contacted any of the jurors to ask them.

Jeff Graham's attorney outlined in great detail how Graham was mistreated and what specific problems existed with the testing during the trial.  At least as much as he was allowed by the MOA's attorney's objections and the judge's sustaining the objections.  Deputy Chief Hettrick sat through the whole trial.  So if she doesn't know what the problems were, that, in itself, is a problem.

I will spell all that out in detail once again in these posts as best as I can - particularly concerning the highly subjective oral exams.  I will go through them in more detail than most people want to hear I'm sure.

A lot of it is technical and at first blush might not seem problematic, except to someone who has been trained in testing.  Unfortunately, the people in charge of testing (and the training for the tests) did not have the state certification that would have qualified them to designed the training and created the tests.  They had Fire Safety Instructor Training Certificate Level I.  (This includes now Deputy Chief Hettrick who was in charge of Training overall in the Fire Department at the time.  Though in her defense, she'd only just been hired.)  Level I certifies you as qualified to give training and exams that were designed by someone else.  Someone who had a Fire Safety Instructor Training Certificate Level II.  Hettrick defended this lack of proper certification by saying that there was no law in Anchorage that required it.  That doesn't change the fact that these folks didn't have the training which would certify their ability to create a training program and develop promotion tests.

I've concluded that these posts will have a lot of repetition and that isn't a bad thing.  It takes awhile to have enough context for specific facts to gain significance, like the training certificate levels.

Graham v. MOA #3: Following The Merit Principles In The MOA Charter Could Have Prevented All This

[This is post #3 of a series on Graham v MOA.  You can get an overview and index of all the posts here. Or just go to the Graham v. Municipality of Anchorage tab up above.]

Understanding the merit system and how to measure people's skills for a job are important to understanding why this case is important.  So I beg your indulgence here.  I've tried to make this pretty easy to digest.

Briefly, before the Merit System (and principles) governments were run on the spoils system - you got a government job if you helped get a candidate elected.  Loyalty, not skill and public spirit, were the key job qualification.  Merit principles don't guarantee fair hiring and promotion, but they go a long way in that direction.

Below is excerpted from the expert witness report I wrote up October 2016.  The judge did not allow the plaintiff to use the MOA (Municipality of Anchorage) charter because he said the promotion process is part of the collective bargaining agreement.  Collective bargaining agreements are approved (on the MOA side) by the Assembly.  But the Charter can only be amended by a vote of the people of Anchorage.  So I still don't understand how the contract would trump the Charter.  But I'm not a lawyer.

Here's from my report:

Background and Purpose of Merit Principles and Systems  

Race and age bias, in the context of promotion of a public employee, is an important issue. But the bigger issue is merit system principles.  Modern human resources departments in reasonably sized organizations both public and private use what is known as a merit system.  The system stems from the 19th Century when governmental structures were evolving from feudal systems based on loyalty to the ruler, to more modern ones, based on rationality.  Scholar Max Weber noted that a new form of organization was emerging which he called a bureaucracy, that was based on rational rules rather than the arbitrary decisions of a ruler.
The point was that organizations that hired people based on their ability to do specific jobs and not on their relationship and loyalty to the ruler were more effective, more efficient, and more permanent.
These ideas of selecting the best person for the job were also promoted in the factory in the early 20th Century by Frederick Taylor and his idea of Scientific Management became widely adopted.  Over time, the ideas underlying Weber and Taylor - the idea that rational, scientific analysis can be applied to management - took hold in private companies.  Applicants would be evaluated by their qualifications to hold their jobs, though personal connections and other biases still were a factor.
In government the change took place both on the federal level  and state and local levels.  In 1883, the Pendleton Act established the US Civil Service after President Garfield was shot by a disgruntled job seeker.  It only applied to a small percentage of jobs at first, but over the years, it has come to cover most federal positions in the career civil service.
On the local level, reformists pushed for merit systems as a way to combat the big city political machines like Tammany Hall that recruited immigrants into their political party with promises of government jobs, as they arrived in the US from Europe.
So, both in government and in the private sector these ideas of rational rules to develop a competent workforce took hold.  But the biases of the times often got written into the rules.  Job tests were written so that new immigrants wouldn’t pass.  Women were assumed ineligible for most jobs and fired from those they could take - like teacher - if they got married.  The societal structure which kept people of color in segregated housing, deficient schools, in poverty, prevented most people of color from getting the needed qualifications, or even from knowing about job openings.  And overt racism prevented those who could qualify from being hired in most cases.
The civil rights movement changed that.  Brown v. Board of Education struck down segregated schools.  This was supposed to lead to African-Americans (particularly) getting better high school educations, then into universities, and then into good jobs.  But many communities opposed busing and set up all-white private schools, leaving the public schools for African-Americans and the poor.
The Voting Rights Act was intended to prevent laws that kept Blacks from voting.  Griggs v. Duke Power was a groundbreaking case in terms of job discrimination.  Black workers traditionally got the lowest level jobs and got paid less than white workers.  When they were required to put in tests for employees seeking supervisory positions, Duke Power created tests that were unrelated to the position and intended to keep blacks from passing. The Supreme Court struck this down saying that the tests for the jobs had to be related to the work that would be done.  They also said that the plaintiffs didn’t have to prove intentional discrimination, only that the test had a disparate impact on the minority candidates.
The merit system was an outgrowth of science being applied to management to ensure more qualified employees got hired.  Businesses developed measures that focused on someone’s ability to successfully do the job.  The civil rights movement fit perfectly into this theoretical ideal.  Job requirements should focus on qualifications, not race or gender.  Griggs v. Duke Power drew back the curtain on the hidden biases that were blocking access to better employment for women and minorities.
Today we’ve come a long way, but we are still a society that sees minority actors in movie roles as criminals or maids or chauffeurs much more than as doctors or lawyers or accountants.  Many people still cringe at the idea of their daughter marrying someone of a different race or religion.  When those feelings spill over into the workplace, into hiring, it’s illegal discrimination.
Unconscious racial bias perpetuates discrimination through assumptions about people based on their race or other characteristics.  Conscious bias attempts to set up barriers that seem legitimate, but are actually intended to keep out undesired applicants.
The merit system is one of the best ways to thwart discrimination so that the most qualified candidates, not the most ‘like us’ candidates, get hired.  It’s the best antidote we have to cronyism, racism, and other forms of discrimination in hiring and promoting employees.

Merit Principles and Systems at Municipality of Anchorage 

The MOA Charter at Section 5.06(c) mandates the Anchorage Assembly to adopt “Personnel policy and rules preserving the merit principle of employment.”   AMC 3.30.041 and 3.30.044 explain examination types, content, and procedures consistent with these merit principles.
Âs defined in the Anchorage Municipal Code Personnel Policies and Rules, “Examination means objective evaluation of skills, experience, education and other characteristics demonstrating the ability of a person to perform the duties required of a class or position.” (AMC 3.30.005)
According to the Firefighters collective bargaining agreement, the conduct and administration of the Anchorage Fire Department, including selection and promotion of employees, are retained by the Municipality. (IAFF-MOA CBA Section 3.1)

Application of Merit Principles to Making And Evaluating Objective Examinations 

In practice, the term merit principles means using procedures that ensure that decisions are made rationally to select and promote those people who are most suited for a job.  They mean that organizations do their best to identify the factors that best predict which applicant is most likely to succeed in the position.  Factors that are irrelevant to someone’s success on the job should not be part of the process.
A test (or examination as used by the MOA) is any process used to evaluate an applicant’s suitability for a position.  An application form can be thought of as a test to the extent that information is used to distinguish between applicants who qualify and those who do not.  A written exam, a practical exam, an interview are all tests when it comes to activities like selection and promotion.
Two basic factors are important when evaluating tests used in personnel decisions.  First, is the test valid?  Second, is the test reliable?
Validity means that the test, in fact, tests what it is supposed to test.  In employment that generally means it is useful in separating those applicants most likely to do well in the position from those less likely to do well.  For example, if a college degree is required for a position, but those without college degrees do was well as those with a degree, then that is not a valid factor to consider, because it doesn’t predict success on the job.  It is common to give applicants a written or practical test or an interview.  These are scored and applicants with higher scores are selected over people with lower scores.
Such tests are valid only if it is true that people with higher scores are more likely to be successful in the position than those with lower scores.  That is, people with higher scores are more likely to do well AND people with lower scores are more likely to do poorly.  If that is not the case, the test is not valid.

Employment tests can be validated by checking scores against actual performance of employees, though this does require selecting employees with low scores as well as with high scores to determine if the lower scoring employees really do perform poorly compared to the higher scoring employees.  This can be expensive and many organizations use ‘common sense.’  But common sense may not be accurate and if an employer is accused of discrimination, they will have to defend the validity of the test.
For rare, specialized positions, validation is difficult to do.  For common positions that are similar across the nation, such as fire fighters, there are often companies that prepare, validate, and sell, and even administer employment tests.
Reliability means that the way a test is administered is consistent.  The same applicant, taking the test at different times or locations or with different testers, would have basically the same result every time.  When people take the college entrance exams, for instance, the conditions are standardized.  No matter where someone takes the test, they get exactly the same instructions, the physical conditions of the test room are within certain parameters (desk size, temperature, noise level, etc.) and they all have exactly the same amount of time to complete the exam.  The scoring of the exams is also the same for everyone.
To ensure reliability of the test taking, all conditions that could affect the outcome must be the same.  To ensure reliability of scoring, the way points are calculated must be as objective and measurable as possible.  Often tests are designed with scales that help a rater know how to give points or how to put applicants in the correct category.
At the most basic level you might just have a scale of 1 - 5 for instance, with ‘good’ at one end and ‘poor’ at the other end.  But how does the rater determine what’s good or bad?
Better would be to have a more objective descriptor such as “successfully completed task with no errors” on one end and “failed to complete the task” at the other end.  Even better would be to have descriptors for each point on the scale.  The more that the descriptor describes an actual objectively testable level of achievement, the more likely it is that different raters would come up with the same score.  For example, ‘meets expectations’ is not as objective as “accomplished the task within 2 minutes with no errors that compromised the outcome.”
Basically, the greater the objectivity of the scoring system, the greater the likelihood of reliability, because there is a clear standard attached to each number in the scale. And with a more objective system, discrepancies can be more easily spotted.  A biased evaluator has a harder job to select favored applicants or disqualify disfavored candidates.  Also, a candidate who was graded unfairly has a better chance of challenging the score.
Another way to increase reliability is to train evaluators on how to use the scoring system.  It is also helpful to have raters who do not have personal relationships with the applicants.
Given the need for validity and reliability, interviews, while frequently used, have been found to be prone to many biases unrelated to the job. There are ways to improve the validity and reliability of interviews.  The questions asked must be clearly tied to ability to be successful in the position, recognizing that being able to perform a task is not the same as being able to describe how one would perform a task.  If personality and speaking ability are not being tested, then interviews can become treacherous employment tests for the applicant and for the employer.  The more subjective a test and the rating system, the easier it is to bias the outcome, whether unintentionally or intentionally.
Since proving intent to discriminate requires overhearing private conversations or emails, this is an impossible hurdle for most applicants.  The courts have recognized this and have allowed ‘impact’ to be used in lieu of intent.  But employment tests can often give us evidence of intent if they are subjective and there is little or no validity or reliability.

Conclusion 

I have seen no materials that offer any information on the validity or reliability of the tests used in the engineer promotional examinations which Jeff Graham has taken.  The exam score sheets I have seen lack rigorous descriptors for raters (or proctors) to calculate scores for applicants and appear extremely subjective.  The materials I’ve seen that were used to train the raters were lacking in detail and substance.
Without evidence to show the exams are valid and reliable, one must assume that the exams do not comply with the Municipality’s mandate to follow merit principles. [Such proof of validation had been requested from but not provide by the MOA.] The point of merit systems is to identify the most qualified candidates for each position and to prevent the introduction of personal biases into their scoring of candidates.  The tests themselves may or may not be discriminatory.  But when they are subjective as the oral board/peer reviews are, biases of the raters are easily introduced into the scoring of candidates. The type of bias could be racial, sexual, age based, or personal depending on the rater.
It is my understanding that MOA has not produced all requested materials and that depositions still remain to be done in this case.  I therefore reserve the right, should additional materials and information become available, to modify or supplement this report.  

Because merit principles were ruled out as the measure the jury would use to evaluate the case, this report was not introduced in court or given to the jury.  However, I was allowed to testify on merit principles in general, but not allowed to relate them to the facts of the case, or even to the MOA.

I was also not allowed to refer to the Fire Safety Instructor Training Manual that the MOA uses which talks about validity in some detail and also talks about 'high stakes' tests - like a promotion test - needing to be professionally prepared and validated.

I was allowed to talk about, again in general terms and not relating what I said to the AFD exams, subjectivity and objectivity.  I acknowledged there is no such thing as 100% objective or subjective, but that there is a continuum from some theoretical total subjectivity to theoretical total objectivity.  The goal of test makers is to have tests as far to the objective side of the continuum as possible.  The more subjective a test, the easier it is to introduce bias, conscious or unconscious.

Graham v MOA #2: Discrimination And Race Issues

See the Graham v. MOA tab at the top, under the orange blog logo for an introduction to these posts and an index of all the posts.

I've decided to stop trying to find some perfect order to tell this story and just pretend we're having a long conversation.  I'll try to pick a general theme for each post and then just talk about, why it's important to the case, my general thoughts on the topic, and evidence that showed up.  This one is about race.


This case started as a discrimination case.  Jeff Graham is Korean-American and over 40.  Did graders give him failing scores on the more subjective exams because of his national heritage or age?  How do you get inside of people’s heads to prove that?
There were no overt anti-Korean remarks made.  The only thing that could be linked to his Korean

Turnout Image from here

heritage was an incident over a ‘turnout.’

A turnout is the heavy suit that protects fire fighters.  Jeff’s had reached its expiration date. (Yes, they have them, I learned in the courtroom.)  It needed replacement.  He was sent a new one that didn’t fit.  The second one they sent him was old and beat up and had on the back the name Chon, another Korean fire fighter.  It was his old, used turnout.
Jeff’s chief at Station 10 was irate.  They just sent him the old coat of another Korean.  (Note that for later when I say people claimed no one knew he was Korean.)  Captain Albrecht saw this as a racial joke and sent the turnout back and tried to find out who had sent it.    There were no records of who sent it, though turnouts are expensive and normally such information is kept.

Jeff’s station captain is a white fire fighter, but he’s sensitive to racial issues because his wife is black.  This fact came out in testimony in court.  Captain Albrecht was asked if he had heard racial jokes.  The Muni (Municipality of Anchorage) attorney objected to the direction of attorney Jeff Jarvi's question.  The judge wanted to hear what Albrecht would testify without the jury present.  The jury was given a break.

Jeff Graham’s attorney, Jeff Jarvi, asked if Captain Albrecht had ever heard racist jokes.  Yes he had.  Then he told one such joke and the situation.

It was Thanksgiving. Fire fighters work on holidays and  he was carving the turkey in the station.  Jim Stewart, a fire fighter who raised a damaging, unproven rumor about Jeff Graham during the oral peer review, said, as the turkey was being carved, “He likes dark meat.  He really, really likes dark meat.”  It was at that point that Albrecht revealed that his wife was black and that Stewart’s tone of voice made it clear that his comment had strong racial overtones.

You'll probably see that both of these are very subtle forms of racism.  They're deniable.  Just a coincidence that he got Chon's turnout.  Dark meat?  I was talking about the leg and thigh, he really likes that.

Monica Elkinton, the Muni attorney, objected on the grounds that just because someone was prejudiced against blacks, didn’t mean they were prejudiced against Koreans.  The judge ruled that telling this story before the jury would be prejudicial at this point.

The resolution was that when Stewart testified (he was a Muni witness because he was a grader in Graham's peer review process),  Jarvi could ask him if he ever told racist jokes.  If he said no, then Captain Albrecht could be brought back to court to tell this story.  In the end, the Muni never called Jim Stewart as a witness, so this never got before the jury.

During the voir dire - the selection, or some might say the weeding out of jurors - Monica Elkinton, the Muni attorney, asked the jury if anyone had ever heard stereotypes about Koreans.  One juror raised his hand and preceded to talk about how people say Koreans are shrewd businessmen always trying to get the best deal.  Elkinton removed him from the jury.  It's significant because the rumor about Jeff Graham that was introduced at his peer review was precisely about that sort of behavior.  We'll get to that later.  But the jury got to hear all this.

A Fire fighter is the lowest rank in the AFD.  Next comes engineer.  You have to promote to engineer to get to any higher positions.

At another point, Chad Richardson, who was in charge of the training and testing for the promotion process from fire fighter to engineer, testified.  He was subpoenaed by the plaintiff’s attorney Jeff Jarvi.  He was asked about an incident at the opening day of the 2010 Academy.

Fire fighters were being welcomed to the Academy.  At one point, a female fire fighter objected to Chad Richardson’s constant use of the term “fireman.’  She asked him to use the gender neutral term ‘fire fighter.’  Richardson explained his reaction.  He testified that he’d been telling a story about firemen, not firewomen. There are firemen and fire woman. There were only men in the story.  He said he told the woman something like,  “You’re a fire woman.  I was referring to fire men.  So I should say firemen.”  Jennifer Henzler later testified that he was actually addressing the whole group and used the term repeatedly.  This was, the welcoming part of the training, the part that was supposed to make everyone comfortable.  He was making her more and more uncomfortable. (Note these 'little' incidents that create a hostile work environment for women.)  In this case too, the Muni attorney, Monica Elkinton argued that discrimination against women didn’t mean he would also be prejudiced against Koreans.

The jury, however, was 13 women and one man. (Two were alternates in case someone had to leave.  The final 12 jurors weren’t determined until after the trial was over.)  The jury heard the hostility toward women in Richardson’s voice and his disingenuous explanation about why he didn’t need to stop saying fireman instead of fire fighter. Or his "I don't remember" when asked if he had apologized later.

Another incident came up near the end of the trial.  Early on, when Jeff Graham was still working as a mechanic for the fire department, he wanted to be "on the line," that is, to become a fire fighter, even though this would mean an initial significant drop in pay.  But he figured he'd be able to promote to engineer.  He’d heard that another department employee, Mark Montfore, who also wanted to become a fire fighter, had been able to apply to be a fire fighter.  So Graham asked Monfore how he had gotten into the next fire fighter academy.  Here’s Monfore’s testimony from my court notes, which are rough, but capture the key points.

Elkinton:  When did you learn he was Korean?
Monfore:  Not sure.  We had a conversation about me transferring and he was doing that too.  He asked some questions.  In that conversation,  in that conversation he said if they don’t transfer me I’m going to play the Native card.
Elkinton:  Sounds like from that statement, sounds like you thought he was Alaska native.  What did you take that to mean?
Monfore: Don’t know if he was insinuating some sort of minority route to get in.

Jeff Graham was brought back to testify at the very end of the trial, specially to address this.

Jarvi:  Mr. Graham do you recall a conversation when you were both trying to switch to AFD fire fighter in 2006?  Was there snow on ground?
Graham:  No snow.  Summer maybe.
Jarvi:  Where was it?
Graham:  Outside AFD maintenance shop. [Where Graham worked at the time.]
Jarvi:  Who initiated the conversation?
Graham:  I did.  I saw him outside, heard he was transferring, I was trying to transfer forever.  He said to take a couple of courses.  “You can take classes or play the Native card.”

The Muni attorney had a follow up question then:

Monica Elkinton: Did you say I’m not Alaska Native.
Graham:  No


So, here he is, the white fire fighter stating that Jeff Graham, a Korean-Amerian, said the way he was going to get into the academy was to play the “Native card.”

Jeff Graham’s memory of the event had Monfore as the one who used the term “Native card.”

We all remember things differently.  This incident happened 11 years before the trial.  But to me, the idea that a Korean-American would tell a white man he didn’t know well that he was going to use the Native card is not believable.  Race card is a term whites invented to dismiss claims of racial discrimination. They use it to dismiss charges that they personally or the system in general are discriminatory.   "He wasn't discriminated against, he's just playing the race card."  It's not something a person of color would normally say to a white person.

To make it even more questionable, Jeff Graham is Korean-American, not Native.  If he had responded that way, he more likely would have said, “race card’ not ‘native card.’

[UPDATE June 4, 2018 - I just came across this quote from a Media Diversified review of Race Baiting For Dummies that supports my contention here:

"A close examination of the usage of the phrase reveals that it is applied almost exclusively to people with non-white skin pigmentation in general and against black people in particular. If one conducts a simple experiment by typing “race card” into a Google browser and then clicks on the image tab, the result will reveal the faces of black people inscribed on various forms of cards with comments such as, “Race Card: For the morally & intellectually bankrupt” or “God gave you your skin colour, so why not use it to your advantage.” Anytime black people open their mouth to speak about racial injustice, they are silenced with five words that have stood the test of time: 'Stop Playing The Race Card.'”]

And why wouldn’t Jeff Graham correct Monfore and tell him he was Korean?  People of color are tired of explaining themselves to whites, and even to other people of color.  This is especially true of people of mixed race who often don’t quite fit in with either group.  I started to really appreciate this point after watching the short film called "What Are You Anyway?" created by a film maker at 2008 Anchorage International Film Festival. It's about how one Japanese-Canadian got sick of people asking him, “So what are you anyway?”




Fortunately, the jury was very diverse racially and I’m sure they understood all this.

Monica Elkinton, the Muni Attorney, only had a few key arguments in her opening statement to the jury.  One was that Jeff Graham failed the exam because he hadn’t studied enough.  (Note:  he passed the written and practical parts of the test  that were more engineer related well.  He failed the much more subjective oral peer review by one point.)  Her other point was that he couldn’t have been discriminated against because people didn’t know he was Korean.  I don’t know if she actually believed this or whether this was simply a legal strategy. I would assume the latter, but I'm not sure. She pushed throughout the trial to reject any evidence of discrimination that wasn’t directed at Koreans.

At Jeff Graham’s deposition, she started out essentially asking him “How Korean are you?”  She asked about his parents (his mother is a Korean who married an American solider serving in Korea.)  Do you understand Korean?  Do you speak Korean?  Do you eat Korean food?  Do you cook Korean food?  Do you have Korean friends?  Do you go to Korean church?

I was dumbfounded by this line of questioning.  Where was she going?  Was she going to try to prove he wasn’t really Korean?  Or Korean enough?  It was kind of how women who have been assaulted are asked their sexual history in order to prove they couldn't have been raped because they'd had sex before.

Missing was any acknowledgment that being different racially from the norm,  plays a big role in being discriminated against.  It doesn’t matter if they know he’s Korean, or even Asian.  Most discrimination in Alaska is against Natives anyway, so if people thought he was Native that would be grounds enough.

Jeff Graham’s attorney, Jeff Jarvi asked fire fighters, who said they didn’t know he was Korean, whether they thought he was white.  They hemmed and hawed.  He’d follow up, did you think he was the same race as you and me?  One answered that he thought he was Italian because he had good hair.

Why does this matter?  Because Anchorage has been identified as having some of the most diverse neighborhoods in the US.  But the Anchorage Fire Department is VERY white.  The numbers that the Deputy Fire Chief calculated in her head at the deposition come to 88% white.  Though that did not include Hispanics.  So lets say it's about 85% white.  When a Korean failed the promotion exam because of his score on a highly subjective oral exam (after passing the more objective and engineer related sections) someone should have asked, why is this happening.  If the fire department wanted its workforce to look more like the city's population, they should have called Jeff in and asked him 'how do we get more people of color into the fire department?'  Did I mention that the three lowest scores on this test were Koreans?  No, I guess not, but we'll get into that when I talk about the exams in a later post.

I would note here that there is a way to avoid discrimination in exams and scoring exams.  The merit system has been around for over 100 years and it's designed to find the most qualified candidates for the job.  It eliminates as much as possible, subjective exams that allow the bias (conscious or unconscious) of graders from slipping in.  It helps minimize any kind of bias so that you don't have to prove that someone was thinking "I will score him lower because he's Korean."  People can find lots of ways to get around it, but when they do, they leave a trail.

I'll get to the merit system in my next post.  Thanks for getting this far.

Graham v Municipality of Anchorage #1: Overview - Firefighter Sues Municipality of Anchorage

Overview

Jeff Graham is a Korean-American fire fighter with the Anchorage Fire Department (AFD).   He originally took the exam to promote to engineer (the next step up in the Anchorage Fire Department (AFD)) in 2004, and passed.  A day or so later he was told he hadn't been eligible to take the exam and so he wasn't being promoted.  He had taken the test early (there's a five-year-as-a-fire-fighter requirement), but he had been given 'equivalency' from the Employee Relations Department as well as the Fire Department, based on the almost eight years he'd served as a mechanic for the fire department before becoming a fire fighter. Others had gotten equivalency and took the test early too. As a mechanic he had driven, repaired, and rebuilt all the AFD trucks, engines, and vehicles.  That experience overlaps a lot with what AFD engineers do in their role to maintain and drive the engines.  

He took the exam again in 2008 when he messed up one part of the practical.  He tested again in 2010, but, as he describes it, he didn't pass the practical exam because they deducted 'style' points even though he accomplished the required tasks.  The practical test involves driving the vehicles and performing specific tasks with the trucks, hoses, etc.

In the 2012 exam, AFD added an hour long oral exam section - ten technical questions and a 'peer review' that covered five questions about character.  That's about four minutes per question.   In 2012 Jeff passed the written exam with a strong score.  He also did well on the practical exam.  But he only got 69 on the oral exam.  70 was the lowest passing score and you had to pass all three exams to be eligible for promotion.  Across the three different exams, his average was comfortably above 70.  There were lots of issues about the subjectivity of the test and scoring that I'll get into in later posts.

After writing a complaint about the oral exam and getting a curt rejection, Jeff filed a complaint with the Alaska Human Rights Commission.  Jeff is trained as a mechanic.   He filed the complaint on his own, without the help of an attorney.  The commission investigated, but did not find discrimination.

Then Jeff hired an attorney, Jeff Jarvi, and after a long pretrial process, the trial finally began in July 2017.  (Yes, Jeff Graham and Jeff Jarvi.  Two Jeffs makes this a little confusing, but I'm pointing it out now so you'll be less confused.)

My Comments About Blogging This

I've had a couple of months to prepare these posts.  There's a great deal of technical detail that I want to cover as I write about this trial, but in this post I'm just trying to give an introduction.  This trial lasted three and a half weeks because of details.  (I'd note that each of the three Alaska political corruption trials - Anderson's, Kott's, and Kohring's - took two weeks or  less.)   I'm going to write about the issues the jury had to consider.  I'll write about issues in the Fire Department that came up during pre-trial (like the subjectivity of the oral exam, or the low percentage of women (about 2%) and people of color (about 15%) in the AFD) as well as things that turned up (for me) in the trial.  While there were some problem fire fighters,  I would note most of the fire fighters who testified impressed me.

I'm hoping that with the breaking of the Harvey Weinstein case and the growing number of powerful men being accused of sexual harassment and/or assault, that it might be a little easier for people to understand what was going on in the AFD. This is not about sexual harassment, but the dynamics are similar.

As I see it, there were a few bad apples who were taking advantage of positions of power.  They were in charge of training and promotion from fire fighter to engineer.  Some people had heard rumors.  Others had seen or been told first hand.  But people were afraid to say anything lest they jeopardize their own careers.  And people higher up, who should have been on top of things, didn't see it.  They apparently believed the perpetrators who reported directly to them and thus dismissed the complaints.

And when I say perpetrators, I'm not even sure how many there were.  There was at least one, but other people contributed to the situation.  It's not clear to what extent they knowingly and/or intentionally did this.

I know I called the first part above an overview, but there's really no middle or end.  I did put up one post on this case already.  It was a very factual, objective post, with little context.  Just the facts.  I posted this with permission of both Jeffs, mainly because I think the story is significant and no other media covered this case, to my knowledge, except for one brief pre-trial report by Casey Grove on APRN.   You can see my original post here.  I should add a spoiler alert, but this isn't fiction and the real story is not the outcome, but what was going on,  regardless of the outcome.

I don't know how many posts this will encompass.  A lot, I'm guessing.  I am also setting up a tab on top for a page that will have an annotated index of the posts.  I'd love every post to be interesting to everyone, but some will get technical and they're particularly there for people who are involved in human resources, the AFD, MOA, and other jurisdictions that might have similar issues.  I'd like to think that everyone who is an employee, and thus involved with the human resources departments in their own organizations, will be interested.  I hope everyone will find the posts readable so they can understand the ways that people abuse the fairness of selection and promotion systems.  A friend probably got it right when she said, "Steve, you really nerded out on this, didn't you?"

My goal in all this is to make this dysfunctional power situation as public and clear as possible so that it will get addressed.

And there will be a post or two on my own ethical challenges as I acted - for the first time - as an expert witness in a trial.  The challenges came because I was also viewing everything as a blogger.  I told attorney Jeff Jarvi, right away about my blogging and we had to determine guidelines.  We agreed I wouldn't blog until after the appeal date had passed.  And that I would not reveal things covered under attorney/client privilege - only things that were public in court or I found from other sources.

Not being able to post until everything was over was really frustrating.  But the deadline for appeal has passed, so I'm free to write.  Actually it passed several weeks ago, but I've held off just to be sure.

This would likely be more dramatic were it live daily coverage of the courtroom and the story as it unfolded.  But that couldn't be.  And despite all the time I've had before the deadline, and all the pages I've written, I'm not sure how I will proceed. There's so much to cover, lots of detail that needs to makes sense.  I've got an outline.  Let's see how it goes.

[Part 2:  Discrimination and Race Issues]