Demotion = Can of Worms

We still haven't seen the actual order demoting a "merit" sergeant from their undeserved spot, but it opens a whole can of worms that the Department is going to have explaining away. The story that we're able to glean so far:

• McStreetlights carries on the tradition of Supernintendos and promotes his driver to the rank of sergeant. What the qualifications are for "merit promotion" remain as vague as ever, but by golly, drivers have them in buckets full;
• the new sergeant goes through the training, buys his white shirts, gets sworn in and assigned to a district;
• stories emerge from the class that someone actually failed (or failed to take) Part One of the test nearly nine years ago. You were not required to take Part Two of the test to get promoted "meri-clout-oriously," but you had to have taken Part One and passed to be on the "merit eligible" list;
• it turns out to be the driver.

Oops.

Here's the problem as we see it:

• The last few times that a "merit" letter has asked for nominees, the Superintendent's Office hasn't gotten a pick. Therefore, some other gold star had to nominate this person;
• The "merit" pick had to go through some sort of "Merit" Board and sit for an interview with the supernintendo. This could have been done on a trip to Rush Street we suppose;
• Any number of people had to sign off on a bunch of paperwork - the nominating party, Personnel, Academy Staff, Chiefs of Bureaus, the Super himself, etc. A lot of brass in other words.

Now we have a whole shitload of verifiable Rule 14 violations involving high ranking members of the Department. Intentional or not, these are false written reports, starting at the top, going down through the chain-of-command and then back up again. You think they wouldn't crucify a regular Officer, Detective or Sergeant if something like this happened in the trenches? That's a big problem itself.

And where, pray tell, is the FOP during all this? They have a copy of the list....or they're supposed to. Does no one sit down and compare the promotional list to the test result list? Someone should have caught the fact that this guy's name wasn't even on the eligible list, right? This calls into question every single "merit" promotion ever given, paints the testing process as thoroughly corrupt (as if we didn't know that already) and explains why the City has been dragging its feet in answering FOIA requests for the "merit" lists.

How many others have slipped through the cracks? How many gold stars are there right now who failed one or more portions of one, two or more promotional exams? Or had someone else take the exam for them? Or didn't even take the exam at all?