Study shows demographics of complaints

In a special report to the City Council Audit and Finance Committee on Wednesday, City Auditor Corrie Stokes said the racial and ethnic composition of city employees investigated by her office is comparable to the city’s overall employee population. According to data from the Human Resources Department, 49 percent of city employees are white, 28 percent are Hispanic or Latino and 15 percent are black or African-American, with a small percentage unknown or of other ethnicities. The auditor’s office received approximately 1,255 allegations against city employees between October 2013 and August 2018. Of those, the office looked into complaints about 596 subjects and after further review opened cases on 85 of them, according to the report. Of those 85 cases, 30 complaints were substantiated. The report states that 47 percent of initial investigations were about white employees. Of the 30 complaints that were substantiated, Stokes said, 60 percent of were against white people. Of the remainder, 17 percent were against Hispanic or Latino people and 20 percent were against African-American or black people. The department was unable to determine the gender of 47 percent of the substantiated cases, according to the report, because the Human Resources Department did not provide it. Mayor Steve Adler seemed particularly concerned about making sure that the public knows minorities are not being targeted at the city. Adler asked for the report at the August committee meeting after the NAACP’s Nelson Linder accused the city of targeting African-Americans for investigation. The report is posted on the city auditor’s website.