Fire Department one of city’s least diverse agencies

The percentage of people of color working at the Fire Department has dropped by ten percentage points in the last 13 years.

To understand why the Boston Fire Department is one of the city’s least diverse agencies, look no further than last year’s class of 53 Fire Academy graduates, 52 of whom are white. Whites constitute 72 percent of the department’s workforce, African Americans make up 21 percent, Latinos, who are 18 percent of the city’s population, weigh in at just 7 percent and Asians are just 1 percent, despite representing 9 percent of the city’s population.

With more than 1,600 employees, the Fire Department is the city’s third largest agency. At a time when Boston has become more diverse, the Fire Department has become more white. This trend has not escaped the attention of the department’s top brass, who plan to increase the number of blacks, Latinos and Asians in its ranks by hiring a diversity officer.

“If and when that position is approved, a person will be hired/appointed to that slot,” said department spokesman Steve MacDonald in a statement emailed to the Banner. “They will then be tasked with working with the Mayor’s Office, the department and other staff and firefighters to get in the neighborhoods and talk about how to get hired, what a great career it is, etc.”

A call for change

District 4 City Councilor Charles Yancey said hiring a diversity officer will not likely produce the kind of change he would like to see in the Fire Department’s hiring.

“It’s not going to effectively change the picture,” he said. “The only thing that’s going to bring real change is some serious commitment from the mayor.”

Blacks, Latinos and Asians occupied 39 percent of the Fire Department’s workforce back in 2000, while the department was still under a consent decree stemming from a 1974 discrimination case. Under the consent decree, the department was required to consider one black or Latino candidate for every white applicant considered for employment.

Since that consent decree ended in 2003, the department’s hires became substantially less diverse, contributing to a 10-point drop in the percentage of people of color at the agency, which now is just 28 percent.

Darrell Higginbottom, a member of the Boston Society of Vulcans, an organization of black fire fighters, says even without funding for a chief diversity officer, there is much the department could do to diversify its recruits.

A major factor in the whitening of the department’s ranks is a state law giving preference to veterans who apply for jobs in police and fire departments. Higginbottom says that law puts black fire fighters at a disadvantage. Although the U.S. armed forces are diverse, blacks, Latinos and Asians in Massachusetts are underrepresented in the military.

“Veterans in the Northeast are predominantly white,” Higginbottom said.

Higginbotham points to an ordinance proposed last year by at-large City Councilor Michael Flaherty that would have increased the residency requirement for police and fire department jobs from one year to three years. He argued that would help ensure that veterans of the military who are not from Boston could not simply rent a room for a year, then apply for city jobs.

While the City Council voted in support of the ordinance, Mayor Martin Walsh vetoed it, telling councilors he would incorporate the language of the bill as part of his annual legislative package in January of this year.

“By utilizing the home rule petition process, we can better protect this legislation from being challenged in the future,” he wrote to the council in a letter in July of last year.

But by the Legislature’s January deadline for filing new bills, Walsh had not submitted language increasing the residency requirement.

A spokeswoman for Walsh said the mayor’s office is in the process of drafting the language.

Reforms within reach

Even without a home rule petition to modify the Civil Service law, the Fire Department could change the way it scores the exam. While state law mandates that veterans be given preference in hiring for police and fire departments, there is no provision in the law that mandates an absolute preference. Entry requirements for the State Police, for example, award veterans an extra two points on the civil service exam, rather than putting them ahead of all non-veteran applicants.

There are provisions in the Civil Service law that could actually be an advantage for people of color, Higginbottom notes.

“If you need Portuguese or Spanish speakers, under the Civil Service law, you can hire them,” he said. “We asked our last commissioner to do that.”

So far, the department has not opted to go that route.

“It’s the status quo right now,” Higginbottom commented. “It’s the worst I’ve seen in my time in the department.”

MacDonald, the Fire Department spokesman, notes that the next state entrance test will be the spring of 2016.

“Remember, we hire based on state law which gives preferences to surviving children of police officers and firefighters killed in the line of duty, disabled veterans and veterans,” he wrote. “We need to better educate the public on the path in place to get hired. The department has never had an aggressive campaign to make this path known.”