100 Black Secret Service agents await day in court

Photo ABC News

Here is an interesting story in the The Chicago Tribune on how Black Secret Service agents await their day in court. Secret Service Agents have admitted that some relevant evidence in the case had been put into a burn bag and destroyed. ABC News says the Secret Service " pristine image is being challenged by a lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 100 current and former black agents which alleges they were discriminated against in promotions." More HERE

Black Secret Service agents await day in court reports, Whitney Blair Wyckoff. Secret Service Agent Reginald Moore walked into work at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building one day in June 1999 expecting a coveted promotion. He'd been working temporarily as assistant to the agent running the president's protective detail, and says he'd been promised he would receive the position permanently.

But before he even sat down at his desk, Moore, then 40, received bad news. "I'm sorry," a colleague told him. "You didn't get the position." He was being transferred to Texas instead.

Moore, who is black, immediately suspected racism. His record was impeccable, he said, and everyone else in a similar "acting" position had been promoted. "It was disappointing, but I still had to do my job," Moore said.

The result is a lawsuit, filed in 2000, alleging that the Secret Service uses an overly subjective promotion system resulting in black agents too often being passed over. Moore has been joined by nine other black plaintiffs, all service employees hired from 1980 to 2002. Like Moore, some still work at the agency. More HERE

From all indications and as reported by Julia Malone the Secret Service may face more sanctions in racism case.

A government lawyer urged a federal judge Thursday not to impose a severe sanction on the Secret Service, despite the agency's repeated delays in producing evidence in a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination.

In a case that has gained national attention, Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson of the U.S. District Court must now decide whether the Secret Service should be forbidden to mount a defense when the long-standing case finally goes to trial.

Robinson has already sanctioned the agency three times for missing deadlines and failing to comply with her orders to provide documents for the lawsuit, brought by 10 African-American Secret Service agents and former agents who charge they were subjected to a culture of racism and passed over for promotions. Many of the allegations of discrimination center on the service's Atlanta office.

In pre-trial testimony, agents have admitted that some relevant evidence in the case had been put into a burn bag and destroyed. And two years after the discovery phase began, the government only recently produced 10 racist e-mails, including one with a joke about lynching, which circulated among senior officials. More HERE

AAPP: ABC writes, "They are the stoic men and women of the Secret Service. Guarding presidents and dignitaries, keeping them safe, even if duty calls one of them to do as he or she is trained and step in front of a bullet." Now one has to wonder what is going on? The outcome of this court case should be interesting.