By Daniel J. Chacón
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company
A year ago, Denver Fire Chief Larry Trujillo said it was “absolutely embarrassing” that no black firefighters had been hired in five years.
The number hired since then is still zero, a situation Councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth called “outrageous.”
“We had basically told Chief Trujillo that he had to work with Civil Service to figure out what was going on, whether it was the testing, what exactly was happening in terms of recruitment, and he assured us that he would be working on it,” Wedgeworth, one of two black council members, said Wednesday
Trujillo said the fault isn’t his since the Civil Service Commision ultimately decides who gets a job.
“I’m tired of people coming to me and saying, ‘How come you haven’t hired blacks?’ I have zero to do with the hiring other than to scream until my face is red every meeting I go to, to say there’s something wrong with this system and it needs to be fixed,” the chief said. “It’s Civil Service and the commissioners. They’re the ones that do the hiring.”
Mayor John Hickenlooper acknowledged that’s the case.
“The mayor has long emphasized the importance of our public safety departments reflecting the diversity of the community they serve,” said Lindy Eichenbaum Lent, Hickenlooper’s spokeswoman. “Both the manager of safety and the fire chief are focused on enhanced diversity in recruitment efforts, but ultimately, the hiring authority rests with the independent Civil Service Commission.”
Earl Peterson, the commission’s executive director, said the city wants diversity and has even revamped its firefighter testing policies to try to increase the number of blacks in the department.
“But we also have to have performance standards in employment,” he said. “It comes down to people have got to perform, regardless of who they are.”
Peterson said his “biggest problem” is that he hasn’t had a lot of blacks test for a job.
“That’s been a killer. It’s just pure numbers of white males that come in. You’re diluted,” he said.
But the commission “routinely weeds out the black candidates,” said Ron Swanson, who is black and has been a fire technician for nine years.
“If they can get qualified candidates from every other section of society, why can’t they find blacks, males or females?” he asked. “I understand we’re not the majority of population in Denver, but man, the police department doesn’t have problems. Why does the fire department?”
Census figures show Denver is about 11 percent black.
The fire department has 903 firefighters. Of those, 52 — or 5.75 percent — are black.
The police department has about 1,452 police officers, and about 10 percent are black, said Lt. Ron Thomas, an 18-year veteran and immediate past president of the city’s Black Police Officers Organization.
He called the number of black firefighters in Denver appalling. While Thomas said he doesn’t think it’s racism, “certainly something has to be done.”
Swanson, whose father was one of Detroit’s first black policemen, said “it’s a mystery in the city” why no black firefighters have been hired in Denver in six consecutive years.
Jim Hunsaker, the fire department’s division chief of administration, said no blacks were part of an academy class set to graduate Oct. 31. But he said there are several blacks vying for a spot in a class of 24 that will begin in November.
“We’ve done everything we can to make the playing field as level as possible to give everybody equal opportunity,” he said.
Hunsaker said the department has made “huge strides” in recruiting blacks. But it’s not easy, he said.
“We have found that other municipalities are having exactly the same issues as we are, even heavily, heavily African-American cities, such as Detroit,” he said. “A lot of times we’re holding out the ring, and nobody is there to take it.”
Diversity worries
No blacks have been hired at the Denver Fire Department for six consecutive years.
The current ethnic and racial makeup of the department:
* White: 637
* Hispanic: 186
* Black: 52
* American Indian/Alaskan native: 14
* Asian: 9
* Undetermined: 5
Source: Denver Fire Department