July 7-13, 2005, City Paper

Blazing Battles

City firefighters blast minority-hiring practices.

by Mike Newall

The Philadelphia Fire Department recently announced a new entrance exam which will open the job of firefighter up to a new crop of candidates for the first time in four years. Ten thousand men and women are expected to sign up for the test, tentatively scheduled for mid-fall. All applicants are offered an extensive study booklet. Those that pass will be ranked in order of their scores and placed on a hiring-eligibility list. Then candidates wait in hopes that their number is called for one of 300 likely vacancies.

Skin color will play a large role in determining the next batch of Philly's Bravest.

For years, a court-ordered consent decree has mandated that each fire class be 12 percent African-American, regardless of whether candidates rank near the top of the list [News, "Smoke and Quotas," Brian Hickey, Oct. 23, 2003]. The decree has long been controversial among firefighters but today, the heated debate is threatening to boil over.

A group of 400 predominantly white firefighters — armed with department documents they say prove the city has consistently been eclipsing the quota and passing over hundreds of more-qualified white firefighters — is calling for a complete re-examination of the department's hiring practices. The newly founded group, a local chapter of the Chicago-based Concerned American Fire Fighters Association (CAFFA), is already backing one member's claim of reverse discrimination against the department, which is currently being reviewed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

There have also been four claims of reverse discrimination brought against the city by white fire candidates in recent years. All were settled when the city granted the candidate employment in a subsequent fire class.

In January, the first class of cadets under Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers did not exceed the 12 percent decree, which CAFFA suspects was a result of its discrimination claim. A new batch of cadets — the final class off the old list — is slated to enter the academy sometime later this month. CAFFA promises a fight if the 12 percent quota is exceeded. They point to recent court cases in Massachusetts, Michigan and a host of other states in which white fire candidates passed over in favor of minorities with lower entrance exams have successfully sued for jobs and back pay.

"For years, the department's been doing whatever it wants with hiring," says Lt. Mike Bresnan, an 11-year veteran and CAFFA president. "Guys have been getting skipped over because of their color without even knowing it. But now we're here and it's going to be a battle."

The consent decree dates back to the 1970s, when Club Valiants, a black firefighters' organization, filed a federal suit alleging that hiring and promotional practices were discriminatory. U.S. District Court Judge Louis Bechtle found the department was not intentionally discriminating, but its hiring standards did have a "disparate impact" on blacks. At the time, the city was more than one-third black but the department was only 8 percent minority.

In the ruling, the court considered past discrimination (the department was not fully integrated until the 1950s) and ordered the test be changed to help black candidates score higher. Hydraulics, physics, mathematics and reading comprehension were all scrapped from future tests. Bechtle ruled that 12 percent of the next 1,250 hires be black, a goal achieved roughly 10 years later.

Over the years, and to its credit, the department has also instituted many minority-outreach programs. Just last month, Ayers announced a highly lauded fire-training partnership with the school district that will eventually lead to hundreds of high schoolers gaining their state firefighter certifications.

"A few years from now," said Ayers at a celebration honoring the first batch of students to enter the program, "we'll be seeing you raise your hands to be sworn into the department." From a survey of the room, the students were almost all minority.

During a 2003 arbitration hearing, former Commissioner Harold Hairston testified the racial breakdown of the department ought to mirror the city's population. Fire classes consistently exceeded the 12 percent decree during his tenure. According to department records obtained by CAFFA, from 1997 to 2002, 80 additional black candidates were hired in place of white candidates with higher scores. In one class, more than 800 higher-scoring candidates were passed over before the department could fulfill the decree. That statistic, Philly's watered-down entrance exam — which many firefighters describe as a "comic book test" — and the fact the physical portion of the entrance exam was abandoned to help women get on the job lead some firemen to believe the department is compromising quality for quotas.

"It's scary," says Bresnan. "These are people you might have to rely on to save your life someday."

Although the city would not release an exact racial breakdown of the department, informal estimates from CAFFA have the department about 60 percent white, 35 percent black and 5 percent other. (The 2000 U.S. Census had Philadelphia's population at 45 percent white and 43.2 percent black.)

Ayers, a one-time Club Valiants president, refused to discuss CAFFA or the consent decree at the public school gathering. "No comment," he said. "It's not an issue for me. We're training our people to work together and be the wonderful diverse group they are and not to gripe all the time about one thing or the other."

Ayers did not return follow-up calls and, Claude Smith, current president of Club Valiants, also did not respond to requests for comment.

Since forming last year, CAFFA has sent numerous letters to Ayers, asking to be recognized as a watchdog organization similar to Club Valiants and a Hispanic firefighter's organization. The commissioner has yet to respond.

The consent decree came up for review, and was extended, in 1993, and again in 1999, when Bechtle ruled that it could not terminate without written order from the court. Bechtle retired in 2001, and a new judge has yet to be assigned to the case since neither the city nor the Valiants have brought a legal challenge. So, the decree sits idle.

Reached for comment at his Center City law firm, Bechtle said that white firemen or a group of other minority firefighters could challenge the fairness of the decree in federal court.

"The city always throws in the towel and settles before the complaints go to court," says Bresnan, "but we'll keep supporting our members who sue and someone's eventually going to tell the city to forget their settlement and push the issue all the way."

For their part, CAFFA members argue that the consent decree heightens racial division among the ranks.

"The decree discriminates against whites but Asians, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities as well," says CAFFA treasurer Kelvin Fong, an Asian-American. "Why should one minority group have an advantage over another?"

There are also unintended consequences, adds Bresnan.

"There's a lot of black guys who get hired on their own merit and may end up being unfairly stigmatized," he says. "And there are a lot of white guys who are resentful about being skipped over and having their careers delayed. But when the lights and bells go off, all the disputes get left at the kitchen table and everybody's going to battle together."