Hialeah, FL, District Fire Chief Alleges Cheating in Promotional Process

A test for one of the highest positions in the Hialeah Fire Department is under scrutiny, prompting an internal affairs investigation after one of the candidates who failed the exam complained that another candidate cheated.

The complaint arose after the exam — which anyone seeking promotion to battalion chief or assistant chief of operations needs to pass to be eligible — was administered in August 2023.

District Fire Chief Robert Ortega filed a complaint with the Hialeah Police Department’s Professional Compliance Bureau two months later. Ortega, one of six candidates who took the test, was one of the three who failed it.

The exam consists of written and oral components, each requiring a minimum score of 70 out of 100 to pass.

In a sworn statement to the police department’s internal affairs unit, Ortega said that “a particular employee was given the answers to the oral exam in order to score exceptionally well.” Although Ortega didn’t mention the candidate by name, in his original complaint he identified the person he believed “was given an unfair advantage” aas the one who scored a 100 percent on the test. The only candidate who got a perfect score on the exam is Edward Altidor, chief of the department’s Professional Standards division.

“An unfair advantage was given to Altidor by someone else over the other candidates, and that is not ethical,” Ortega told the Miami Herald. He said division chiefs like Altidor have an unfair edge in promotions. “They have ‘palanca,’” he said, using the Spanish word for lever, a slang term for high-placed benefactors.

In his statement to internal affairs, Ortega also complained that the oral test questions did not align with the study material outlined in the Hialeah Fire Department Professional Standards Manual. District Fire Chief Vladimir Kanarev, another candidate who failed the exam, confirmed Ortega’s claims in his own statement to internal affairs, saying the study material was not consistent with the oral portion of the exam.

Ortega told the Herald the fire department’s leadership “created a Frankenstein test” that favored certain candidates, noting that 50% of the candidates failed.

He complained that “there’s a cultural thing” at the department in which top ranking officials are helped when they take promotion exams. They “don’t open a book and they got a perfect score,” he added.

Altidor declined to comment for this story, referring a reporter to his lawyer, Naomi Levi Garcia.

“He did not cheat, and he did not have an unfair advantage,” Garcia told the Herald in a statement.

After internal affairs closed out its investigation on Aug. 27, Hialeah’s Human Resources Director, Elsa Jaramillo-Velez, asked members of the city’s personnel board to throw out the eligibility list from the results of the 2023 exam.

The personnel board is considering at least three options: discarding the eligibility list and redoing the oral examination; discarding the results of the entire exam, or maintaining the current eligibility list, which would allow candidates who passed the controversial exam to be eligible for the position when a vacancy arises. The board has yet to make a decision, saying it is awaiting input from Fire Chief William Guerra.

Altidor’s attorney argued that there is no legitimate reason to invalidate the promotional list.

The list of people who have passed the exam is important, especially at this time, because several vacancies could lead to the position of battalion chief coming open. Guerra himself plans to retire in May, which will open other leadership positions at the top.

The battalion-chief exams were created by Deputy Fire Chief Raymond Malin, Guerra told the internal affairs investigators. Malin retired shortly after he was interviewed by internal affairs about the cheating allegation. He did not respond to a Herald request for comment.

According to the internal affairs investigation, a third candidate who failed the test, Division Chief Emmanuel Louis, had been given a copy of the oral exam from previous years before the test. Hialeah’s Human Resources department told city officials they had given Louis the copy of the old test because “he was the designated contact for the Fire Department regarding exams”. While the exam Louis received was not identical to the one later taken by the six candidates, Human Resources Director Jaramillo-Velez described it as “very similar.”

Jaramillo-Velez discovered emails indicating that Louis had forwarded a copy of the oral examination to Altidor before they took the test, according to the internal affairs investigation.

At a personnel board meeting last month, Louis denied any wrongdoing. “I failed the oral portion of that examination, so to insinuate that there were some types of cheating,” he said, is “absurd and disrespectful.”

Guerra, the fire chief, told the Herald he will make a decision soon but did not say whether the exam will be redone.

The city firefighters’ union told the Herald that the investigation showed there was “an unfair advantage” in the administration of the exam, and that the chief needs to take disciplinary steps, which could include terminating staffers and removing candidates from the promotion list.

Some members of the department, including some ranking officers who asked not to be named, told the Herald they feel the chief has shown favoritism toward Altidor in the past, including taking him off day-to-day firefighting duties and appointing him chief of the division of professional standards.

Guerra denied that he has shown Altidor favoritism.

“How can anybody say that?” the chief said. “It’s not true.”