5 black police officers play blame game with Jordan

Michael Jordan refuses to be a scapegoat.

Five black Minneapolis police officers pointed to an unproductive September meeting with the head of the city's Civil Rights Department as the turning point in their decision to sue the police department last week for racial discrimination. Jordan says that's not true, and has thrown the blame game back to the cops.

The eight officers at the meeting laid out significant concerns, Jordan acknowledged, but he said he requested additional documentation to support the allegations that they were passed over for promotions, overtime and educational opportunities. The officers wanted him to file the complaint personally, an action Jordan said the department's director had done only a handful of times in the past 10 years.

When the two-hour meeting ended, Jordan said he never promised a case would be opened. He suggested other avenues, such as filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or meeting with Police Chief Tim Dolan.

None of the officers contacted Jordan again, and without warning "dropped the bomb" by filing the federal suit. Jordan won't speculate whether he would have opened a case if the officers approached with the news of a pending suit. "It might have tilted my decision," he said.

It's unusual for a top-ranking city official like Jordan to respond so candidly to issues under litigation, but he said "there's a bunch of stuff going on that I don't understand."

Some of the same issues discussed at the September meeting were brought to Jordan's attention by Minneapolis officers he knew when he served as the state's Public Safety commissioner in the early 1990s.

Edwards, speaking on behalf of the officers, said Jordan dismissed their concerns. Jordan said he shared information from the meeting with Dolan, Mayor R.T. Rybak, the city's human resources director and at least one City Council member.

Fear of retaliation

The officers asked Jordan to keep their names secret for fear of retaliation, but Edwards wrote about the meeting in the Spokesman-Recorder the next day. Edwards said the officers never made such a request.

After the meeting Al Flowers, a member of the Police Community Relations Council, said Jordan told him the officers were "disgruntled cops near the end of their careers." Jordan denied the comment. Instead, he recalled, he said the older officers at the meeting shouldn't be so worried about retaliation.

"In the end, none of the officers contacted me again and I don't have an obligation to find them," Jordan said.

At an October meeting of the relations council, Edwards said Jordan told the group the case was closed and it was his right to make that decision. Again, Jordan denied this, specifically calling out Edwards as somebody "saying all kinds of weird things that have got me concerned."

"Why would the black officers pursue any more action with Jordan when they heard he had already closed the case?" Edwards said. "They were convinced he betrayed them and moved on."

The fact that Jordan is speaking publicly about the meeting is an indication that city officials believe they are in trouble over the suit, Edwards said. A good attorney "would advise everyone to fall silent" and let the suit be handled in the appropriate manner, he said.

Before the suit was filed last week, Jordan said any of the officers he talked to at the September meeting could have called him to find out the status of the investigation. He has known two of the plaintiffs, Lt. Lee Edwards and Sgt. Charles Adams, for more than 15 years. Two other lieutenants and a sergeant also are part of the suit.

"They are trying to infer this suit was somehow my fault," Jordan said. "Reasonable minds can differ, but I don't think taking at least three months to look at issues of this complexity was inordinate."