Jan. 06--The Albany Fire Department is almost entirely white and male, and that's the way it's always been.
Attempts to change its racial composition stretch back decades.
In that, Albany's fire department is like others around the country, particularly those in cities. It is under pressure to hire a workforce that better reflects the diverse population it serves.
In 1993, 3 percent of the city's firefighters were black; the percentage today is 4.
The city's black population, meanwhile, has grown from 20 percent in the mid-1990s to more than 30 percent today. While women and other minorities are also underrepresented in the fire department, the most glaring disparity historically has been between whites and blacks.
Changing that entrenched culture, in which firefighting careers can span generations, has been a challenge for many municipalities, including Albany, that use a strategy focused on recruitment. And in cities where that alone hasn't made a significant difference, other methods are now being used with some success.
Rochester and New York City recently fielded their most diverse class of recruits after changing their entrance exams. Those cities' fire departments were under court order to diversify, as Albany's once was.
In 1997, Albany settled a federal discrimination lawsuit by agreeing to overhaul the fire department's minority employment practices as well as to hire Sebastian Banks, a black candidate who sued after he was passed up for the job while white candidates with the same exam score were hired.
Former Fire Chief Robert Forezzi, who recently retired, said he started diversity initiatives soon after he began the job in 2006. Some are aimed at Albany's youth, like the summer cadet program, in which city teens participate in day-to-day work at the firehouse.
Forezzi also created an EMT class for the high school and a free class for residents, because the certification is a requirement for being hired.
So far, Forezzi said the programs have led to the hiring of one black firefighter, but he's adamant that his effort will lead to more hiring.
"We've laid the groundwork," Forezzi said. "Under my administration, the recruitment efforts have increased tenfold. ... I think we're making a difference."
Still, a large part of the process is out of the chief's hands. The city of Albany's Municipal Civil Service Commission screens candidates for the hiring list.
Questions about that process were recently raised in a legal action against the commission after Lewis Wood, a young black man, was disqualified based on a letter from a detective in the Albany Police Department, Kathleen Hendrick. She cited a number of "police contacts" and a "traffic summons" and recommended that Wood not be put on the eligible candidate list for "being deceitful during his interview."
But Wood was never interviewed. Hendrick later said the mistake was a "typo."
After a Times Union article about Wood's case, former Mayor Jerry Jennings urged the commission to reverse the decision, calling it "counterproductive."
Wood is now on the list of eligible hires; the settlement of his case is still pending.
Police Chief Steven Krokoff said that while Hendrick will still do background checks, having her draw conclusions on candidates "was unfair to her" and she will no longer issue opinions to the commission.
Despite these changes and numerous recruitment efforts, some observers say more drastic measures are needed for true transformation.
Retired firefighter Elston Mackey worked for the Albany Fire Department for 26 years. As one of the few black firefighters, he said he repeatedly told fire chiefs and other local leaders why diversity has been such a challenge.
"The biggest impediment to blacks getting on that job is the test," said Mackey, referring to the civil service exam.
That was true in Rochester, according to Rochester Fire Chief Salvatore Mitrano. His department was recruiting the city's minorities, but it wasn't making enough change.
"It's been a challenge for every chief as long as I've been here," he said.
Asking around, Mitrano kept hearing that the state civil service exam was the root cause of the department's difficulties. So Rochester hired Morris and McDaniel, a company that created tests for police and fire departments across the United States.
What helped the Rochester Fire Department move closer to its diversity goals was getting rid of the standardized, multiple-choice state exam, and replacing it with a test that measured multiple areas, including a written portion, an oral exam and a multiple-choice section.
The new exam was "more career oriented" for firefighters, Mitrano said.
Since making the change in 2011, 23 of the 47 new Rochester firefighters are minorities.
"Changing the test made more of a difference than anything I've ever seen," Mitrano said.
Under state law, localities can produce their own exams or may use a vendor, without state approval.
New York City had a similar result after a federal judge in 2009 ruled that its test discriminated against minorities and had little relation to firefighting. After recently implementing a new exam, New York City's department began training its most diverse class of fire recruits ever: 62 percent are minorities.
In Albany, seven of the last 60 people hired since 2009 were minorities.
A more flexible assessment, which takes into account multiple components, leads to a more diverse candidate pool, said David Morris, founder and CEO of the company that crafted the exam for Rochester.
However, in Albany, the civil service exam wasn't the issue for Wood. Other factors negatively affected his candidacy.
Wood is the great nephew of Alice Green, a community activist and founder of the Center for Law and Justice.
Green was most disturbed that Wood's encounters with law enforcement (he was arrested twice on misdemeanor charges but wasn't convicted) were initially cited in his disqualification.
Green wonders how many other minority candidates were deemed ineligible using that same justification. "Encountering the police is something you live with as a black man in Albany," Green said.
Asked how commonly "police contacts" are cited in disqualifications, Tara Wells, attorney for the city Civil Service Commission, said she didn't know and that an answer would require looking back through years of records.
In 2012, the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warned employers not to use arrest records in hiring decisions since "arrests are not proof of criminal conduct."
The Albany commission agreed that the use of police contacts was inappropriate in the case of Wood, Wells said, and upheld the disqualification based on the undisclosed traffic ticket, until Jennings intervened.
The commission's three members -- Ann Engel, Erin Apostol and Andrew Phelan -- declined an interview request.
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan said diversifying the fire department is a priority. She said she wants a creative solution and plans to look at the possibility of changing the test.
"We need to think outside the box and completely restructure how we hire firefighters," Sheehan said. "Clearly, what we've been doing isn't working."
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