KANSAS CITY (AP) — Officials in Kansas City, Missouri, are pushing the leader of the city's fire department to address longstanding discrimination against Black firefighters, after a newspaper investigation found Black and female firefighters have been blocked from promotions and faced harassment for decades.
Kansas City Fire Chief Donna Lake, who is white, told the City Council Thursday that new City Manager Brian Platt has directed her to implement a plan to address the problem, The Kansas City Star reported.
Lake testified before the council days after The Star published the results of a year-long investigation, which found unwritten rules within the department kept Black firefighters from preferred stations, hampered their ability to be promoted and often left them ostracized in majority-white stations.
In one incident, a white fire cadet “joked” that his favorite knot was a noose and placed it around the neck of Black classmate at the fire academy two years ago. The city tried to fire him but he resigned after intervention from the firefighters union.
“Where was the support for the brother who had the noose put around his neck?” Councilman Lee Barnes Jr. asked Lake. "That’s the kind of culture that needs to be obliterated. We need to blow that up.”
Lake, who has been chief for a year, did not dispute the newspaper's findings.
“I have no words to say about it,” Lake said to Barnes, “other than I agree wholeheartedly with you.”
The chief said her plan includes investigating claims made in the report, hiring someone outside the department to ensure fair treatment of all employees, and improving recruitment and promotion systems.
The paper reported that only 14% of fire department employees are Black, in a city where 30% of residents are Black. Its stations remain unofficially segregated by longstanding promotion practices and at some busy, inner-city fire stations, there hasn’t been a Black captain in at least a decade.
Female firefighters also reported severe sexual harassment. And the city has not outfitted all of its stations for women, despite promising to use revenue from a special sales tax to make those upgrades.
Lake said the department has already made some efforts to address discrimination and poor recruitment of minority members but acknowledged those efforts have either fallen short or are relatively new.
Civil rights leaders who listened to the remarks were not impressed and noted that Lake and Platt, who is also white, did not seek input from Black leaders for their plans.
“We are insulted at her insinuation of the age-old excuse ‘we can’t find them’ or ‘they don’t qualify,’” Vernon Howard, head of the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said in a written response.
The plan also calls for development of a zero-tolerance policy for discriminatory behavior, a review of fairness in promotion, changes to make firefighters more comfortable with filing complaints, and the creation of an equity and diversity officer position.
Gwen Grant, president of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, said she believes Lake is part of the problem.
“For more than 20 years, she has been a silent witness to racism and discrimination inside KCFD. For the past 365 days she failed to take immediate, impactful steps to put a stop to the racial violence in her department and hold her captains and administrators accountable. Her presentation (Thursday) was nothing more than window dressing," Grant said.