The NAACP charged Tuesday that black employees are treated unfairly in the Natchez Police Department &045; but the allegations simply don’t bear out when you look at the numbers and the system by which officers are hired and promoted.

More than half of the sworn officers are black. More than half of the department’s employees are black. Half of the supervisors are black. It is true that none of the four patrol shift supervisors is black, but two of the former shift supervisors, who are black, requested transfers.

Even if there were a racial imbalance in the police department, it would not be because Police Chief Mike Mullins was personally selecting who to hire or promote.

Let’s review: The Civil Service Commission is involved in hiring and promoting police officers, not the board of aldermen or the police chief himself.

The system is set up to work fairly. Persons interested in being hired as officers take an oral exam before the Civil Service Commission, the fire chief, the police chief and the civil service clerk &045; a board that is evenly racially mixed. Potential officers are placed on an eligibility list, ranked based on their scores from that oral exam, and the police chief must hire them in that order of their rankings. Other than being part of the oral exam, the chief cannot pick and choose who is hired. The system works in a similar way for officers who wish to be promoted.

Whoever is first on the list to be hired or promoted is chosen &045; and that is based on written examinations approved by the U.S. Justice Department for racial and gender bias and based on oral interviews by an evenly racially mixed committee.

It should be puzzling as to why the NAACP took its complaints about hiring and promotions to the board of aldermen in the first place, but the aldermen have recently caused confusion about how the system works.

The NAACP should take its complaints to the Civil Service Commission or to the Board of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, which decides which officers are certified to serve in law enforcement in Mississippi.

The board of aldermen does not need to allow Police Chief Mullins to be the scapegoat for misplaced allegations and misrepresented facts.