MA Agency Released from 1972 Consent Decree

The Springfield (MA) Police Department has been removed from a 1970′s consent decree that required departments across the state to follow hiring ratios intended to prioritize black and Hispanic candidates for police and fire departments.

According to Springfield Police, the Massachusetts’s Attorney General’s Office informed Springfield Police Superintendent Cheryl Clapprood Monday that a judge removed the Springfield Police Department from the 1972 Castro v. Beecher Federal Consent Decree on Friday, July 22.

The decree, which took effect in 1975, instructed human resource department in more than 100 Massachusetts municipalities to follow hiring ratios that would prioritize black and Hispanic police and fire candidates. It came as a result of multiple lawsuits which alleged discriminatory hiring practices in Boston in the early 1970s, Western Mass News reports.