Joseph Ray Terry was awarded $150,000 in damages and back pay after a Memphis district court judge ruled that he had been discriminated against by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with investigating workplace discrimination. Terry, a white Louisiana-trained lawyer, applied in 1984 to be a district director, but in the years that followed he was repeatedly passed over for promotion in favor of blacks—one of whom did not even possess a high school diploma. As part of the settlement, Terry will be granted the district-director position he has long sought.

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In the state of Connecticut, groups wishing to hold a rubber-duck race must obtain a permit, have each duck inspected, and ensure that the ducks are environmentally sound. The state's Division of Special Revenue issued two pages of regulations on the subject, including requirements to give each contestant a diagram of the "natural stream of water," which "has a steady current" on which the race is to be conducted and which shows the starting and finishing points.

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At a meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called in response to a series of rapes in the Cambridgeport neighborhood, police Sgt. Joseph McSweeny was publicly upbraided for circulating a picture of a suspect named Santiago Grenados, who was wanted in connection with one of the rapes, and who was later indicted.

While women in the neighborhood demanded that the police pour resources into investigating the sexual attacks, some felt that police were racist in giving out information about Grenados, a Latino man of dark complexion who is from El Salvador. Although police had issued a warrant for his arrest, some were outraged that police would pass around his picture in connection with a crime for which he hadn't been convicted. Cathy Hoffman, who serves the city as the Commissioner of Peace and Nuclear Disarmament [$51,000 salary], complained that "to pass around a picture of a man of color doesn't speak to the problem and can promote racial fear or racism."

Police spokesman Frank Pasquarello commented that McSweeny was right to show pictures of the suspect to neighborhood residents. "If we were looking for a black or a white man we would have circulated their pictures too," said Pasquarello. "We were looking for a Hispanic man from El Salvador."

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