City Police Force To Add Minorities

The Cambridge Police Department, in an effort to better represent Cambridge minority groups on the force, will soon appoint five women, eight blacks and three Hispanic men, along with 20 white men, to the police force.

Of the 250-member present force, only 11 are black and one is female. James F. Reagen, chief of the Cambridge Police, said yesterday that while the 36 new police officers have not been hired yet, they will be soon though no date has been set.

This summer five black policemen field suit against Reagen, city officials and the members of the State Civil Service Commission, charging them with discriminatory hiring and promotional policies.

The suit is still pending, and hiring of minority-group members has, until this past week, been delayed by a court order to restrain hiring until the outcome of the suit is established.

The result of the suit brought by the five policemen would be to implement an affirmative action plan for police recruitment and promotion. It would entail a rewriting of the civil service examinations on the grounds that they discriminate against minority applicant.

The civil service commission is now permitting lower-ranking minority-group applicants to be selected for jobs on the force before those who, while testing better on the civil service examinations, will not help the Cambridge Police Department become more representative of the people it works for