Case 5.5 Equal Protection and Efficiency: Baker v. City of St. Petersburg (1968)

Equal Protection and Efficiency

Summary
Twelve Negro police officers brought action attacking validity of certain practices of police department allegedly based on classification by race. The United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida…held in favor of police department, and the Negro police officers appealed. The Court of Appeals, Wisdom, Circuit Judge, held that police department practice of assigning only Negro policemen solely on basis of race to patrol Negro residential district patrol zone and never assigning Negro policemen to patrol any other zones offended equal protection clause of Fourteenth Amendment.

Opinion
WISDOM, Circuit Judge:
We are asked to apply the law of equal protection to a factual situation not previously presented to the courts. Twelve Negro officers on the police force of St. Petersburg, Florida, attack the validity of certain practices of the city’s police department which are allegedly based on classification by race….

I.

The police department of St. Petersburg has 254 police officers, of whom 14 are Negro. Until 1950, there were no Negroes on the force. In that year, the City hired four Negro officers and assigned them to patrolling the Negro areas of the city. Since that time, more Negroes have been added to the force, but they are largely restricted in their duties to policing Negro citizens. The Chief of Police, Harold C. Smith, testified that the force is short of its authorized strength by several men, and that he has actively tried to recruit both Negro and white men to fill these vacancies. The Department is divided into three major divisions, Uniform, Detective, and Service, with several subdivisions. Two Negro officers are assigned to the Detective Division, two to Service, and the rest to Uniform, also referred to as Patrol. One of the Negro patrol officers is a sergeant, but none of the other Negroes is…in a command position. The sergeant and the detectives are not named plaintiffs in this action, but since it is a class action their rights are involved to the extent that they are members of the class.
For the purpose of police patrol, the city is divided into 16 zones. Each zone is patrolled during three shifts daily by one radio car. The zones vary in size and character, and are designed to equalize the complaint load for each patrol car—except for Zone 13.
Zone 13 is unique in shape and area. It is irregular in shape, and as Harold Smith, Chief of Police, testified, that zone was designed to encompass the principal Negro residential and business districts. Zone13 is entirely overlapped by other Zones, chiefly by Zone 12, and in smaller areas by Zones 1, 10, 11, and 14, so that every part of Zone 13 is also in another zone. With these exceptions, there are no other overlapping patrol zones in the city. The police administrators assert that the purpose of this overlapping is to equalize the complaint load per patrol car. Since Zone 13 has approximately twice the number of complaints as the other zones, it is given twice the patrol strength through this double coverage. Of course, this same result could have been achieved by dividi8ng the area covered by Zone 13 into several smaller zones.
Zone 13 is also unique in its patrol force; no white officer is ever assigned to Zone 13. No Negro officer is ever assigned to any other zone, including Zone 12, which duplicates Zone 13 for about 75 percent of its area. The district court found that “the assignment of Negro officers to the predominantly Negro Zone 13 was not done for the purpose of discrimination but for the purpose of effective administration” in that “in the opinion of the Chief of Police, they are better able to cope with the inhabitants of that zone, who on occasion become abusive and aggressive toward police officers during a disturbance; and, further, that they are able to communicate with the inhabitants of the Negro area better than white officers and are better able to identify Negroes and investigate criminal activities in that zone more effectively than white officers.” The record discloses no evidence in support of Chief Smith’s opinion.

* * *

Of course, if police efficiency were an end in itself, the police would be free to put an accused on the rack. Police efficiency must yield to constitutional rights. “In a government of laws, existence of government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously.”

III.

The district court erred in holding that the racial classification was merely for the purpose of police efficiency. The exclusion of Negroes from participation in law enforcement was part of the now-rejected pattern of excluding Negroes from positions of power and influence. Not until 1950 did the City of St. Petersburg hire Negro policemen. The first Negro officers were restricted in their duties to policing the Negro areas of the city, and were instructed to call for the assistance of a white officer if they found it necessary to arrest a white person. Before the institution of the zone postal system, the Negro officers were assigned to a particular patrol car, colloquially referred to in the department as the “colored car,” and restricted to patrolling the Negro areas of the city. While many of the restrictions on the Negro officers have been removed, their numbers on the force remain very small; there is but the one Negro sergeant on the force; and Zone 13 remains a unique zone in the St. Petersburg police system. What the St. Petersburg Police Department did was to superimpose on natural geographic zones an artificial zone that rests on the Department’s judgment of Negroes as a class. The Department concluded that Negroes as a class are suitable only for the zone appropriately numbered 13. This is the kind of badge of slavery the Thirteenth Amendment condemns…. However, in this case it is necessary to hold only that a Department’s practice of assigning Negroes solely on the basis of race to a Negro enclave offends the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
We do not hold that the assignment of a Negro officer to a particular task because he is a Negro can never be justified. It is clear, however, that, with due respect for the good faith of the Chief of Police, his opinion that Negro officers are better able to police Negro citizens cannot justify the blanket assignment of all Negroes, and only Negroes to patrol Zone 13. While strict equality is not and should not be compelled, Negro officers should be rotated among the various patrol zones of the city, in the same manner as white officers insofar as ability, available work force, and other variables permit.
Racial gerrymandering of political boundaries is clearly unconstitutional…. We do not hold, however, that the drawing of Zone 13 so as to encompass most of the Negro community is invalid on its face. On remand, the burden will be on the defendants to prove that the purposes sought to be achieved by the pattern of the zone could not be achieved without the overt racial classification.