Police, fire department diversity questioned
GREENSBORO — On Friday morning, Greensboro graduated a group of 19 firefighter recruits.
They passed a strenuous agility test with ease, instructors said.
And they performed well in the classroom. Four recruits were within a few points of the top-ranking academician in the class, Cameron Madden .
If there was one area in which the city’s 59th firefighter recruit class may have been lacking, it was diversity. About 85 percent of the graduates were white.
In Greensboro, a little less than 50 percent of the population is black, Hispanic, Asian or another racial or ethnic minority, and that has federal and city officials wondering why the police and fire departments are not more diverse.
It’s an issue the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating as part of a probe of city hiring practices launched earlier this spring.
It’s not clear exactly what the Justice Department expects to find in Greensboro. But one clue may be found in other cities that have faced government scrutiny.
In the past few years, Justice Department officials have gone after police or fire departments in Virginia, New York and Ohio.
Each time, they have found that minority applicants for entry-level positions failed application exams — such as math or written tests — more often than their white peers.
That, the Justice Department contends, amounts to disparate or discriminatory treatment, which federal law does not allow.
In Greensboro, the Justice Department is looking at the percentages of blacks and Hispanics in the fire department and of black officers in the police department.
Both departments take special steps to encourage a diverse applicant pool.
But the recruit classes still do not reflect the diverse community.
In the fire department’s past eight recruit classes, 37 percent of graduates were minorities, according to city statistics. In the police department, 73.5 percent of those in the past five classes were white.
It’s a problem city officials say they’re willing to address.
“If we’ve got something that’s broke, let’s fix it,” said Greensboro Police Capt. Danny Ingram . “If not, let’s get back to work.”
In other cities, even when minority candidates apply to work in public safety, they don’t always make it through the hiring process.
In 2006, the Justice Department took the Virginia Beach, Va., police department to court when it found that black and Hispanic applicants failed a math portion of the department’s entrance exam more often than white applicants.
The department used a standardized test, created by a testing company, that applicants had to pass to continue in the hiring process.
The department could not show any correlation between the math skills test and officer job performance, said Capt. Marie Chiarizia of Virginia Beach.
In other words, you don’t need to be a math ace to be a good police officer.
Virginia Beach ended up allowing 124 previously disqualified applicants to reapply. Most opted, instead, to take their cut of a $160,000 compensation fund.
Now, the city places less emphasis on mathematics in its application process. The test also was revised to ensure it applies directly to required job skills.
“It definitely has been a lesson learned,” Chiarizia said. Virginia Beach now has 5 percent more minority staff members than it did previously.
The fact that racial groups perform differently on tests has been well-documented in the education research field, UNCG professor emeritus Linda Wightman said.
Hiring processes that place more emphasis on job-related performance measures and less emphasis on written tests get better results, she said.
Greensboro’s fire and police departments use written tests as part of the application process.
In the police department, test performance is only one of the things considered when determining whether an applicant can continue, Ingram said.
But in the fire department, applicants must pass an exam that tests mechanical aptitude, math and reading skills, said Assistant Fire Chief C.W. Whitworth , the department’s training supervisor.
Firefighter applicants must answer at least half the questions on the written test correctly to continue in the hiring process.
“Below that, we figure they are not suited,” Whitworth said. “We feel that is a fair way of doing it.”
All 131 people who took the test in the last application round reached the 50 percent mark, Whitworth said.
Still, the fire department’s new chief, Gregory Grayson , said he’ll work with training officials and the city’s human resources staff to evaluate the test and recruitment practices to try to improve the department’s statistics.
“We will be working hard to improve the process so that our department is reflective of the community we serve,” Grayson said.
Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: Bennie Whitson III was one of 19 Fire Academy recruits who took their oaths Friday at GTCC’s Jamestown campus. About 85 percent of the graduates were white.
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