Fire chief’s diversity class upsets rank and file

By Timothy Pratt

Thursday, Oct. 10, 2002 | 11:22 a.m.

The union representing Las Vegas firefighters will decide on Oct. 16 and 17 whether to hold a no-confidence vote on department Chief David Washington's leadership, Local 1285 President Dean Fletcher said.

A no-confidence vote would give firefighters the opportunity to express dissatisfaction with Washington but would have no official bearing on the chief's job.

The issue that made union members call for the meeting was discontent over a diversity training class given to paramedic rookies in July. The class is currently under investigation by the city's human resources department.

"The class was definitely the straw that broke the camel's back," Fletcher said.

The union head said problems with the class were an example of growing dissatisfaction with the chief's top priority: increasing diversity.

The conflict pits an as-yet unknown number of department members against Washington. Fletcher said they are tired of his way of addressing the issue of race.

"Each chief has a major goal or issue," he said. "(Washington's) is diversity -- not safety, not operations. And the way he's going about it is upsetting a lot of people."

But Washington said he's being misunderstood and is only trying out new methods to develop a better fire department.

Of the fire department's 633 employees, 72.5 percent are white, 11.7 percent are Hispanic, 11.7 percent are black and 2.9 percent are Asian, said Washington. Thirteen percent of the department's employees are women.

"We should have more Asian, Hispanic, and women employees, and that's obvious from a statistical point of view," Washington said. "People think I'm trying to drive a wedge between different groups, but I'm not.

"I don't consider myself a traditional fire chief and some people don't abide by change. But we're going to make a dynamic fire department here."

The class in question was held July 23 as part of a pilot program. Called Alliance Training, the class's curriculum "focuses on racism, sexism and other 'isms,' " said Shannon West, director for Clark County's Neighborhood Justice Center. The center began offering the training to county employees in July 2001.

The Las Vegas Fire Department was the first city agency to try the training.

"Doing the class in our department was my idea," said Washington. "Why is this important? Because fire fighters spend 90 percent of their time interacting with each other in the firehouse and not fighting fires so it's important to learn to appreciate and tolerate others in terms of diversity."

But the 2 1/2-day class was canceled in less than two hours after the rookies expressed concerns about its content to department fire training officers during a break.

Though Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell said the concerns were still being investigated by human resources and couldn't be described in detail, Washington said that part of the problem was in the way the class began -- shades were drawn and the doors were locked.

"I think there was a communication breakdown," Washington said. "When these trainers came in someone from the department's training division should've told them that this class would be out of the box.

"If I was in a class and somebody started closing windows and shutting doors, I would be alarmed as well."

The investigation is a first for the city.

"To my knowledge, there's been no other class that's been sponsored by the city that's caused a controversy by an employee group in attendance. Not to this degree," said Claudette Enus, director of human resources for Las Vegas.

The case was made public when an anonymous letter was sent to Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman several weeks after the class, alleging that the rookies had been "intimidated, degraded and humiliated... ."

The letter says, "...the cadets were told biased racial comments, one of which was 'Black on black violence is the result of white domination... .' "

It also mentions a part of the class where the cadets are asked to write down what they liked about being a firefighter and paramedic. Then the trainers crumpled up the papers on which the cadets had written their answers and threw them in the garbage, telling them to forget it all because it was "BS."

West said exercises such as the one involving crumpled paper are used as ice breakers and that Alliance trainers can pick from many others for any given class.

"It's unfortunate that these exercises were taken so far out of context and were focused on rather than the intent of the training itself," she said.

Fretwell said responding to the letter was difficult.

"There are some inaccuracies. ... And one of the things we take very seriously is allegations of racism ... which is hard with an anonymous letter," she said.

She said she could not comment on the content of the class until human resources completed its review.

But Fletcher agrees with the letter's content.

"We don't feel that you as a chief have the right to make anybody feel uncomfortable," he said.

He said that the chief has also made people feel uncomfortable with remarks made at department meetings.

He mentioned a comment Washington made about hiring the paramedics who took the Alliance class : "If we have to hire 15 white boys, then so be it." The same comment is mentioned in the letter.

Washington admitted he used the phrase, "white boys," and said it was inappropriate. It was also taken out of context, he said.

"A staff member had asked me if I'm truly into diversity and I said, 'Yes, I am.' At the same time, we had 15 qualified Caucasian paramedics and they deserved to be hired, so I was trying to say that the public doesn't care about their skin color, as long as we get the paramedics we need.

"Was I insensitive? Yes. I'm sorry I used the term I did."

But Fletcher said the apology is not the point and the union's 490 members will show next week that they're ready to have a no-confidence vote -- and he predicted that the results will not favor the chief.

Washington said he doesn't feel the discontent mentioned by Fletcher when he visits the city's 12 fire stations.

"Sometimes you will be misunderstood in leadership roles," he said. "But I feel it's a small percentage of people in the department who feel this way."

Meanwhile, human resource's review of the class should be completed in the coming weeks, Enus said.

Unless its recommendations are to stop the class altogether, a revised version may be offered in mid-October, when a new group of rookies is scheduled to begin training.

"I just think this has been one particular issue that was blown out of proportion," Washington said.