Massachusetts News

January 21--Although the U.S. Supreme Court is moving the country against government administered race and gender-based decision-making, the long awaited O’Toole Commission Report released yesterday strongly pushes Boston in the other. 

Commissioned by Mayor Menino last February after a three part investigation by the Boston Globe into the Boston Fire Department, a report was released yesterday, surprising few, raising troubling questions for others. 

It prompted one civil rights lawyer to say, "It is moving Boston toward a very expensive lawsuit, and fostering a policy that has resulted in racial divisiveness in the past."

Chester A. Darling, the lawyer who overturned all of the state and federal courts in Massachusetts with a unanimous decision in the U.S. Supreme Court and is currently winning against the Boston schools, says:

"The Commission is advising the mayor to use the Boston Fire Department as part of a social experiment to achieve diversity, by adopting policies that promote the culture of race-based thinking in the ranks."

Darling says that the report makes several worthwhile recommendations such as stressing that there be better training of its command staff and that managers be encouraged to develop rank and file members who may be suitable future leaders. 

Recommends A ‘Diversity Consultant’

However, it is highly critical of what it terms an "old boy network" at the top and a reliance on current "traditions" that fail to achieve greater diversity. It states that the "failure of the Department to address properly such important issues as race and diversity cannot be allowed to continue." 

The report recommends the hiring of a diversity consultant to conduct training sessions to address the problem. "Department leadership must facilitate this discussion," the report states, "and there exists no excuse to further postpone the dialogue." The report stresses that the department "must address the perceptions among many minority and female firefighters that they are excluded from the team." 

The report, although not confronting it directly, is critical of the predominance of white males at the top of the command structure. "Part of the problem" the report states, "lies in the underrepresentation of minorities and women in the senior Department ranks." While the consent decree in the 1974 Boston Chapter, NAACP v. Beecher case addressed minority hiring goals for firefighters, the lack of a consent decree in the civilian ranks, the report says, "is perceived by some as evidence that the Department does not maintain minority-hiring practices as a priority when left to its own devices." Toward this end the report recommends that the "Department commit itself to a more comprehensive effort to reach out in all communities including Spanish-speaking, Asian, and gay and lesbian communities," a recommendation Attorney Darling terms "truly bizarre." 

"I will agree with the Commission report on this one point: the consent decree issued in 1974 was about achieving diversity and not about curing discrimination. The practice of manipulating people on the basis of race in the absence of particularized discrimination was wrong then. It is wrong now." 

To ensure greater promotional opportunities, the report recommends that reliance on written tests be downgraded. "Statisticians will tell you that all written examinations contain a standard deviation in which all candidates are ‘qualified’" 

Recruit Women from National Guard

The Commission does not believe the existing system should remain in place. It does, however, recommend that physical requirements for women not be lowered. To ensure that more women pass the tough physical tests necessary to be a firefighter, it recommends that it recruit from those organizations, such as the National Guard, where women may be in better physical condition. It also strongly recommends an aggressive drug testing policy. "Management and Union should prioritize this issue in the context of collective bargaining." 

The Commission also recommends the creation of a new civilian Commissioner, a recommendation that is not expected to sit well with rank and file, and the creation of three new positions answerable to the Chief of Department. The positions are: Chief of Administration, a civilian position; Chief of Operations, a uniformed position; and Chief of Planning and Technology, uniformed or civilian. It recommends that these three position be created outside the collective bargaining unit. 

While the report recommends other changes, the thrust of the report is in the area of achieving greater cultural diversity in the fire department. "The main challenges facing the area of human resources and personnel are discrimination and sexual harassment, minority representation in the Department, gender parity, promotions, education of the workforce, injured on duty, disability retirement and procedures, and civilianization. . . The Department must commit itself to become an organization that welcomes diversity."

"Achieving diversity is fine," Attorney Darling notes, "so long as it doesn’t happen at the expense of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal treatment of the law. Once it crosses that line, you enter a forbidden area under our Constitution. Of course, you can always abolish the Fourteenth Amendment and be done with all pretense of equal treatment, and have all the managed diversity you want. As I view it this is a politically inspired document with a predictably correct conclusion. The same people that created the document will later use it in court as their authority for more gender and racial discrimination." 

Darling is president of the Boston-based, Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights.
 

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