By Mike Hendricks
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The U.S Department of Justice has ended its investigation into discriminatory employment practices at the Kansas City Fire Department three and a half years after it began in response to a Kansas City Star series outlining longstanding discrimination within department ranks.
The city legal department was notified of the decision in a letter dated Jan. 21, a day after President Donald Trump was sworn in to his second non-consecutive term. It’s unclear whether the timing was coincidental.
The letter gave no indication what the investigation found or why it was dropped, but that is typical department practice.
“The Department of Justice has concluded its investigation and decided to close the matter without further action,” read the letter, which was signed by Karen D. Woodard, chief of the employment litigation with the Justice Department’s civil rights division. She was promoted to that job during the Biden administration and was acting chief when the city was notified on July 2, 2021 that an investigation had begun.
New leadership at the Justice Department put a freeze on civil rights litigation this week and suggested that it might reconsider existing agreements with police departments negotiated by the Biden administration, the Associated Press reported.
The department was also investigating alleged discrimination within the Kansas City Police Department. A police spokesman did not immediately reply to The Star’s request for comment on whether there had been any change in the status of that DOJ probe.
The Justice Department said at the outset of its fire department investigation that it was focused on “publicly available information that suggests the KCFD may be engaged in hiring practices that discriminate against Black applicants for the position of entry-level firefighter, in promotional and assignment practices that discriminate against Black firefighters throughout the ranks and in maintaining a hostile work environment for Black firefighters throughout the ranks.”
Those were among the findings of The Star’s investigation and were the partial focus of a cultural assessment report funded by the City of Kansas City.
City and fire department officials have said they have taken a number of steps in recent years to address hiring and promotion practices within the department since The Star’s series was first published in December 2020.
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