October 23-29,
2003
CITY PAPER
Smoke and Quotas
Are the Fire Department's hiring practices unconstitutional?
by Brian Hickey
When City Controller
Jonathan A. Saidel addressed the class of incoming firefighters at
their graduation ceremony last Friday, he offered a colorblind message.
When firefighters [go out
on a call], they don't care if you're black, white, yellow or purple,
he said. All they know is someone's in trouble and they're there to
save a life.
But today – as
discourse surrounding the mayoral campaign has taken a decidedly racial
turn – the Fire Department finds itself being criticized for
hiring practices that have some crying reverse discrimination. By
exceeding the minority-hiring levels set forth in a 1974 consent
decree, critics say, the city actively passes over deserving white
candidates because of their skin color.
The issue pops up
occasionally, but some active firefighters -- and several excluded from
recent recruit classes – believe it's now taking on greater
import.
They cite a U.S. District
Court decision in Boston that, in August, awarded jobs, back pay and
seniority to four whites denied jobs in favor of minority candidates
they outscored on civil-service exams. Local firefighters, the attorney
who won the Boston case and a reverse-discrimination website are all
fueling speculation that a similar suit could be filed here.
If there's an order or a
decree, once the goals are met, it evaporates. You can't just hire
people to reach some numeric goal, says Massachusetts attorney Harold
Lichten. That's no longer constitutionally permissible.
In 1974, U.S. District
Judge Louis C. Bechtle found the Philadelphia department woefully
lacking in diversity. (When that civil rights suit was filed by the
Club Valiants, an organization of black firefighters, less than 100 of
the city's 3,000 firefighters were black. Valiants president Claude
Smith was unavailable for comment.) Bechtle required that 12 percent of
the next 1,250 hires be black. When 151 black firefighters were hired
10 years later – many elevated over higher-scoring whites
– that objective was achieved. The order was questioned in
1999, but Bechtle decided it couldn't end without a written termination
from the court. (In other words, the 12-percent-per-class level
remained intact, as it has since Bechtle retired. The case hasn't been
transferred to another judge and nobody's brought a legal challenge.)
Still, there is a litany
of cases in which cities settled lawsuits filed by whites who were
awarded their jobs and back pay, including 21 white firefighters and
police officers who split $1.4 million in Birmingham, Ala. Asked about
the issue, Fire Commissioner Harold B. Hairston said he didn't much
care whether the precedents applied.
I follow the law. I make
no attempt to interpret it. As long as that's the law, that's what I'm
going to follow, he said.
Mayor John Street noted,
We ought to have more minorities in the Fire Department but we're not
going to compromise the integrity of our department to make it happen.
He said
diversity-recruitment efforts have brought minority candidates together
to better prepare for the exam upon which candidate ranks are
established.
I don't know of a single
case where we passed someone intentionally over to reach a certain
minority. It's about finding a qualified person, but we need more
minorities in places they're underrepresented, Street averred. We've
been through some of this before. I hope we don't have to go through
that again.
Neither an active
firefighter interviewed for this story nor a police officer who wanted
to be a fireman will give full names. But each claims the hiring
practices are unfair. Street and Hairston, they say, are just wrong and
point to one recent class, when a minority ranked No. 503 was hired
while no whites ranked below No. 58 were.
You'd always hear people
whispering about it, but there was never any real proof, says the
10-year Fire Department veteran. It can become a safety issue when
people who aren't qualified for the job get in. And, for some black
firefighters who earned their jobs, it becomes a stigma. People
automatically think they just got it because of quotas.
Adds the police officer,
People would say, "Good luck kid. There are two lists, and you're on
the wrong one." Nobody can give me a good reason why I shouldn't be in
there. The way I was brought up, I thought it was the best man for the
job.
According to city records
gathered by firefighters -- and later posted on www.adversity.net, an
anti-quota website operated by a Maryland man who says he was unfairly
frozen out of federal contracts -- each of the last six fire-recruit
classes topped the 12-percent level.
(In one such class, 14
extra minority candidates were hired. In another, the 2003 Firefighter
of the Year wouldn't have initially made the cut had it not been for
the 10 extra points awarded to military veterans.)
Though Hairston offered
no further explanation, he was quoted at an arbitration hearing as
saying, 50 or 55 percent, like the minority population is in this city,
sounds a lot more like what [the department's racial breakdown] should
be.
For his part, mayoral
challenger Sam Katz says he's heard from numerous firefighters that
there are concerns, primarily about safety, when it comes to hiring and
promotional practices. He, and others, expect it to become a
high-profile issue.
Is [the consent order]
needed anymore? That's not for me to decide, says Tom O'Drain,
president of the city firefighters union. But it's making white people
angry and it's making black people angry.
