Lykos on Diversity

Well, we're a little over a month and a half into the Lykos Administration and it doesn't look like there has been much ground gained in making the Office "the best in the Nation" as promised by Pat in her campaign.

-members of the Defense Bar are still anxiously awaiting their copies of offense reports. We keep being told that they are coming!
-the A.D.A.'s are being told that the budget has already been expended.
-the morale within the Office continues to plummet.
-Lykos is spending a large amount of time in the basement parking garage smoking like a chimney while forcing her staff to come with her to talk business.
-the Office is hemorrhaging money having to pay for special prosecutors to handle every case where Jim Leitner or Clint Greenwood acted as defense attorneys.
-the investigator that Lykos brought in to act as her personal chauffeur for her county vehicle has apparently already wrecked said county ride.

But of all the things that Lykos has failed to accomplish or screwed up thus far, one of the most interesting broken campaign promises that I've seen thus far is her definition of "diversity" regarding personnel within the Office.

First of all, for those of you who don't understand how the Hierarchy Flow Chart works within the Office, here's the thumbnail sketch for the higher positions -

1. Elected District Attorney
2. First Assistant
3. Bureau Chiefs (approximately 5 or 6 of them)
4. Division Chiefs (approximately 20 or so of them)
5. District Court Chiefs (approximately 40 or so of them)
6. District Court Twos (approximately 60 or so of them)

Granted, the Office was not exactly all that incredibly diverse when Lykos was coming in. There were two African-American Division chiefs, one Hispanic Division chief, and one Hispanic District Court Chief (and no African-American Chiefs). If I recall correctly, there was one Hispanic District Court Two, and two African-American District Court Twos.

The Office definitely needed some more diversity in it, and Lykos vowed that she would bring it.

Let's see how she did.

Well, she started right off the bat by not renewing the contract of one of the two African-American Division Chiefs, Joe Owmby (for reasons that are still beyond me), and she moved one of the two African-American District Court Twos out of the Trial Bureau entirely because she had dared to support Clarence Bradford during the campaign.

After finishing up with her firings, demotions, and transfers, Lykos was given the opportunity to promote seven District Court Two's to the level of District Court Chief. She picked seven excellent candidates to be promoted, and I think every last one of them deserved to be made chief. Every last one of them, however, was Caucasian and about as diverse as the Brady Bunch.

Of those promoted to Felony Two, I am unaware of any promotions made that would have made the flow chart look a little more diverse, but I could be wrong about that.

Now, keep in mind, when it comes to promotions from within the Office, Lykos didn't really have a whole lot of diversity to choose from when she was moving folks up the ranks. There weren't too many senior Felony Two's who were African-American (other than the one Lykos moved out of the Trial Bureau).

If Lykos was going to get a jump-start on making the Office a more diverse place, she was going to have to do it with her lateral hires and the folks that she brought in to form her Bureau and Division Chiefs. These would be the folks that she could hand pick to be her Upper Administration, and she was certainly not shy about picking political cronies and old friends -- surely she could make some space for some other folks as well.

But as Lykos was building her Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight, there was about as much diversity as a Mississippi Country Club in the 1960s. With the exception of former-Judge Hannah Chow (who is Asian-American) becoming the Public Services and Infrastructure Bureau Chief, every last person that Pat Lykos has brought into the Office on lateral hires has been of the Caucasian Persuasion.

From Jim Leitner all the way down to Mark Bennett's favorite Lateral Hire to everyone in between, I'm failing to see any steps towards diversity.

So, at the final count, under the Lykos Administration, we now have one African-American Division Chief, one Hispanic Division Chief, one Asian-American Bureau Chief, zero African-American District Court Chiefs, and one Hispanic District Court Chief.

That's not sounding all that diverse to me.

And, oh, by the way, the one Hispanic District Court Chief turned in her resignation on Monday.