LV fire chief concerned about lack of black recruits

By Timothy Pratt

Monday, March 24, 2003 | 9:29 a.m.

For the second time in a row, a graduating class of the city's firefighting academy included no black recruits, a disappointment to the department's first black chief.

"These numbers jump out at you, there's no doubt about it," said Las Vegas Fire Chief David Washington, who took the post in August 2001.

The department's most recent academy graduated 49 new firefighters on Feb. 21. Thirty-nine of them are white, four are Hispanic, three are Asian-American and three are American Indians. None was black. One black applicant postponed an offer to go to the academy until the next class, which begins in April.

An earlier group of eight new firefighters also included no black recruits. Only three classes have graduated from the academy since Washington took the top job.

Officials from a local black firefighters group blame a new policy that requires applicants to be certified emergency medical technicians before they apply, instead of getting the training in the academy. The requirement was put in place in January 2000.

The cost of the EMT training -- from $400 to $1,000 -- is keeping out many minorities, said Bertral Washington, president of United Firefighters of Southern Nevada, an association for black firefighters of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas.

"A lot of minorities just don't have that kind of money," he said.

Since then about one-third fewer blacks have applied to become firefighters compared with 1998, before the requirement was put in place, Las Vegas Human Resources Department numbers show.

Other fire departments are facing the same issue, said Chief Washington, who is not related to the association president.

"It's been felt throughout the country, with the requirement affecting recruitment," the fire chief said.

The drop in the number of black applicants has added to a longer-term trend affecting the number of blacks hired. Black applicants have had more difficulty than other groups passing the written exam that is the first step in the process leading to a job in the fire department, human resource numbers show.

In 1998, 21 percent of black applicants passed the test, compared with 56 percent of all applicants. Fifty-two percent of Hispanics passed the test.

Last year 33 percent of black applicants passed the test, compared with 63 percent of the total and 49 percent of Hispanics.

The test includes reading, mechanical reasoning and math, Chief Washington said.

"Somewhere, in one or some of those areas, there's got to be an issue," he said.

Judy Tuttle, deputy director for the human resources department and manager of recruitment, said the test scores are an important factor in the low numbers of blacks being hired.

"My personal feeling is it's not so much the EMT, but the studying for the test that may be an issue," she said.

Bertral Washington said he had only recently received numbers on the 2002 tests and hadn't looked them over yet. He said he had asked human resources for numbers from previous years but hadn't received them.

He said he didn't know why blacks were passing at a lower rate than other groups, but suggested that one factor could be a built-in bias to the tests themselves.

"It's not like you haven't seen culturally biased tests," he said. "Look at the SATs, for example."

The Fire Department test has changed several times in recent years, Tuttle said. A new version will be offered next year. Study guides and examples of questions will be available, she said.

"We're going to be giving applicants more tools and hope this helps," she said.

Chief Washington, the United Firefighters and the city's human resources department all said that a more diverse department is in the best interest of the community.

"If you reflect the community you work in, you will have a higher level of service," the chief said.

According to Census estimates, 9 percent of Clark County's population was black in 2001 and 23 percent Hispanic.

Only 6 percent of Las Vegas' 249 firefighters were black as of March 1. Thirteen percent were Hispanic.

Chief Washington said the department set the EMT training requirement to save time and money. When the training was a part of the academy, the county bore the cost.

"From a fiscal standpoint, it's favorable ... and it reduces time in training about four weeks," he said.

"But it has definitely had an effect on the number of minorities applying, and you can see this in the last couple of classes," he said.

In 1998, of 1,866 applicants who were eligible to take the academy's written test, 10 percent were black. In 2002, after the new requirement was set, of 1,649 applicants only 4 percent were black.

The fire chief said he has changed the policy for upcoming academies to allow people to seek EMT training after passing the written, physical and oral exams, instead of beforehand, as well as allowing people whose certification has lapsed to apply to the academy.

The United Firefighters group is offering scholarships to help applicants who can't pay for the training, and the department is seeking partnerships with different agencies to offer the same.

Human resources is also sending firefighters into the community, hoping to interest young minorities in the career.

But the United Firefighters think the training should be placed in the academy again, as it was before.

"We think there should be a moratorium put on the EMT (certification) requirement until there's more access for minorities," Bertral Washington said.

Meanwhile, Chief Washington wants to wait and see how the new policy and the other efforts play out in upcoming academies.

"I'm not going to throw my hands up in the air," he said.

"They don't pay me to panic, but to be a strategic planner."