Report: CG Civil Rights office lacks skills

[unhappycamper]

Report: CG Civil Rights office lacks skills
By Amy McCullough - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Feb 24, 2009 18:08:17 EST

Employees in the Coast Guard’s Office of Civil Rights do not have the skills or up-to-date training to handle many of the service’s cases and formal discrimination complaints are not adequately handled, according to an independent report presented to the Coast Guard on Feb. 5 and released by the service Thursday.

Terri Dickerson, the office’s director, requested an independent review April 25, 2008, less than one month after an investigation by the Coast Guard Investigative Service, Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI failed to determine who left nooses for a black Coast Guard Academy cadet and an officer conducting race-relations training in the summer of 2007.

At the same time, an unofficial Coast Guard blog was posting regularly about the office and the director’s alleged inefficiencies, reducing morale among employees and casting OCR in a negative light, according to the report.

The findings are “deeply disturbing and completely unacceptable,” Cummings, D-Md., wrote in a letter this Sunday to Commandant Adm. Thad Allen. Cummings, the chairman of the House subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, said he plans to call a hearing in April to further discuss the report.

“The findings of this report demand decisive and comprehensive action to correct what appear to be a number of significant shortfalls in the administration,” he wrote.


Rest of article at: http://navytimes.com/news/2009/02/coastguard_civilrights_022409w/%2e