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FDNY'S RACIAL WOES

FDNY'S Racial Woes

To the Editor:

The FDNY's recent minority recruitment campaign, decried by many as a lowering of standards, is really a Department of Justice spur to the FDNY to integrate or the Federal Government will do it for them. It's curious that the minority hiring push, which Mayor Bloomberg swears is volitionally prompted from within the Fire Department and his own administration, coincides with the DOJ investigation.

I challenge anyone to provide an example comparable to the 91-percent white male FDNY model, in a city as diverse as New York no less, and deny racism as the main contributing factor. In your Aug. 11 issue, retired Fire Marshal Kevin James wrote a powerful article exposing the FDNY's complicity in maintaining its ivory complexion. He offered a measured response to the present challenge while shredding every FDNY explanation for the dearth of minority firemen. Kudos to The Chief for being out front on this important story! Look at every other city service and the diversity is obvious, yet the FDNY expects us to believe that with its $75,995 full-pay salary and fringe benefits and 20 years-and-out retirement, it has been historically overlooked by millions of minority New Yorkers looking for a better standard of living?

Those who scream that the new minimum requirements are now less, including Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, don't grasp that the prior standard of 30 college credits in any field, including cooking classes, was arbitrary at best and a deliberate impediment at worst.

Don't hold your breath expecting any sea change in the FDNY's entrenched hiring practices. Expect instead some scattered political photo ops and hollow oratory in black neighborhoods promising opportunity but delivering little.

JEFF NICHOLS, Emergency Medical Technician