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New study of Lansing's
troubled fire department
June 9, 2022
What does Mayor Schor do when he can't seem to get a handle on troubled
city department? Appoint a commission, create a board, or hire someone to do a study. A "Lansing
Fire Department Independent Review" was released at the end of May
by The Center for Safety Assessments and
Inclusion, a Fort Lauderdale group. They'd been asked to focus on
these areas:
New Chief Brian Sturdivant, hired in early April, told the
Lansing State Journal that a lot of the information in the report is
not really new. Indeed. A few years ago, two former employees of the LFD published
their opinion of what is going wrong. In January 2019, I posted on this
website an
anonymous letter from a
Lansing firefighter who later identified himself as Michael Lynn Jr, who
was fired in February 2021 for sharing on Facebook the cell phone number
of then-police chief Daryl Green. He has sued the LFD for racial
discrimination and creating a hostile work environment.
The other was former chief Randall Talifarro,
who resigned in 2018 after six years as chief. In March of 2019, he published an
open
letter to Mayor Schor. In August 2020, he and other former employees
sued
the city for racial discrimination.
Two areas of the independent review - diversity training and minority
recruitment - were addressed by Talifarro and Lynn:
Diversity Training
Paraphrasing the Independent Review:
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Although the LFD does not currently require bias training, it is
clear that it has not fully realized its goal of a harmonious
and respectful workplace. The Department must urgently
strive to institute regular, mandatory training designed to
adequately prepare its workforce for working together with every
sort of American. |
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Talifarro says a diversity training program was in place under
his administration:
Minority Recruitment
Paraphrasing the Independent Review:
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The diversity of the Department does not approach the levels in
the Lansing community. The Department does make efforts at
recruiting and hiring a diverse workplace, including reaching
out to the Lansing School Board to work with high school
students interested in firefighting and holding events with
local community colleges and technical schools. |
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Talifarro says a recruitment program was in place that brought
in local young minorities and got them licensed and certified. It
succeeded because they received
salaries during training:
Mike
Lynn says that besides paying the trainees, no prior experience was
required. And it helped that Mayor Bernero gave full support to the
effort:
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[Chief Talifaro
and Mayor Virg
Bernero] decide its time to diversify this
department.
They
both made their intentions clear to Union
officials and the public by opening up the
hiring requirements to include no prior fire
experience needed and paid training. This
brought in people from the city! Applications
from minorities flooded in for the 2014-2016
classes. In the 2014 class; 7 applicants were
hired with no prior or some prior experience,
and were trained to complete all certifications
needed. Of those, 5 were African American men
with Lansing addresses. In the 2016 class; 8
were hired with no or some prior experience, of
those 3 were African American men. These 2
classes reflected the diversity in this city
more then any classes hired here before.
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Lynn thinks the obstacle to hiring more minorities is the union -
the IAFF. The most recent hiring class at the time of his letter had 14
firefighters. One was Black, all the others were white males. In his
opinion, the reason was:
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THE UNION
leadership. Our union leadership reflects the
diversity they want to see in this department;
not one person of color and not one female union
official! So how does the union get this done? I
mean the union leadership doesn't do the hiring
right?
Wrong! The union
leadership has a hand in everything that happens
in this department, all the way from influencing
elections to determining who and when someone is
hired or fired through influence. To understand
this, you need to understand that this
department promotes from within by seniority so
that means that everybody in every Union
position started as a firefighter. Every one of
them went up through the ranks together, and now
hold the top positions in the department. . . So can you see
why nobody wants to go against the union
leadership? In my opinion, Chief Talifaro
didn't seem worried about any of this and only
wanted to do what he felt was right, and so the
union hated him! They fought everything he tried
to do. Campaigned against him in an onslaught of
slander and defamation at the kitchen table on a
daily. This practice makes any person not
favored by the union a target for all forms of
harassment and discrimination and most times
this falls squarely on the minority firefighters
in the ranks. So through the influence to get
Chief Talifaro to "resign" and Chief Odom to
"retire" they ushered in the new world order and
now we have The 2018 hiring class. The
practice of hiring EMTs has always been what
Lansing fire department has done, in most cases
this is the only way minorities get
hired because the national average of
minority firefighters trained as paramedics and
have their Firefighter certification is very
low. In most cases, a class of 20 potential
Paramedics may not have any people of color in
them and only a few females. |
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Like any Democratic politician, one of Andy Schor's
top priorities is keeping the unions happy. Union PACs are his biggest
campaign contributors and he boasts of union support in his campaign
materials (as I reported in this
story). If the union doesn't want minorities, he's not likely to go
against them. Although Talifarro doesn't blame his departure on the
union, he sensed Schor wanted him out:
Talifarro's letter was in response to Schor's creation of a
Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council. (Schor announced today he
is creating a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Board.) Talifarro concluded his letter as
follows:
Lynn's entire letter is here;
Talifarro's is
here.
Send comments, questions, and tips to
stevenrharry@gmail.com, or call or text
me at 517-505-2696. If
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know.
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