April 16, 2007

Legislator Ciotti Demands Local Minority Participation in Police Recruitment

At the Legislative Meeting held on April 11, 2007, Legislator John J. Ciotti successfully led the fight to defeat the award of a contract to a non-minority owned company because there was no local minority representation, participation or minority business involvement.

The contract would have awarded $250,000 to Sanna, Mattson Macleod, Inc., a Suffolk advertising company, to implement a media campaign aimed at recruiting minority applicants for the upcoming Nassau County Police Officer Examination. “I can’t believe that the Nassau County Police Department is trying to hire vendors to do police applicant recruitment without utilizing minority groups and businesses in the recruitment phase. A contract of this size, importance and amount should be spread out within the minority community in order to ensure that all minorities are advised of the upcoming police hiring.”

The Legislators voted the contract down because they were not convinced that the police department’s streamlined procurement procedure properly considered selecting a minority-owned company for the job.