Leaving Vulcans' Helm
Black Firefighters' Voice Steps Aside

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

The huge brownstone that sits at the corner of Brooklyn Ave. and Eastern Parkway was a dilapidated structure eight years ago - full of loose wires, rusty pipes and sagging floors.

The Chief-Leader/Adrienne Haywood-James BUILDING ON A STRONG FOUNDATION: Over the past eight years, Capt. Paul Washington (right) brought the Vulcan Society's fight for racial equity in the FDNY into the national spotlight through a discrimination lawsuit, forcing city leaders to take a more proactive approach to minority recruitment for firefighting jobs. Firefighter John Coombs (left) will helm the fraternal organization as of Jan. 1, when Captain Washington steps down.

A young firefighter, just starting in the position that would turn him into a prominent community activist, decided that renovating the eyesore was his first goal.

Appearance Counted

For Paul Washington, then the newly-elected president of the Vulcan Society, which owns the building, the hall was an extension of the organization. It had to exude the same aura of pride and discipline that his members - black firefighters working in the predominantly white Fire Department - were expected to exhibit on the job.

"He had a lot of detractors [within the Vulcans] about that renovation," said his brother, Lieut. Kevin Washington. "But now, I don't think you could find one member who'd say it wasn't in fantastic shape. I look at that hall, and I realize it set the tone for Paul's agenda. It's emblematic of who he is and how he works - do the whole job, and do it right. They called in an architect, plumbers, electricians and from top to bottom, they turned that building around."

It's one of many legacies that Mr. Washington, now an FDNY Captain, will leave when he steps down as president of the Vulcan Society on Jan. 1.

The 45-year-old has served as the Vulcans' president for eight years - winning four consecutive elections - but under the group's bylaws, he's been term-limited out. He could run one more time after a two-year hiatus, but said that's unlikely to happen.

"I love what I've been doing, and I would love to do it another eight years if I could," Captain Washington said in a Dec. 19 interview. "But on the other hand, I'm really happy with the new president and the new board that's coming in, and it's always good to make room for new leadership and new ideas, so I'm very much assured that the society is going to continue in good hands."

'Like Following FDR'

The torch will be passed to Firefighter John Coombs, who has been active in the Vulcan Society for eight years, attending most of its press conferences and community events but never in the role of spokesperson.

"I'm no stranger to the media, though, and I'm certainly not afraid to speak on my behalf or the organization's behalf," he said in an interview last week.

He'll have the benefit of his predecessor's insights - Mr. Washington will remain an active member of the Vulcan Society - but must forge his own ties to the FDNY administrators, elected officials, agency heads and community organizers with whom Mr. Washington had respectful relations, if not always warm ones.

"Following Paul's a bit like following FDR - in fact, that's what I call him, because he's been around so long," Mr. Coombs joked. "He's done such an amazing job that it will take a little bit of time for everyone to adjust. I like most of Paul's agenda. He's done nothing that I disagree with. I do believe that we've missed the boat a bit by not reaching out more to young people in the communities we serve, and I would like to focus on that."

Another legacy Captain Washington leaves is an increased commitment to minority recruitment by the FDNY and city officials.

A Lawsuit That Stung

The department is fresh from a drive that garnered 29,638 applications for the upcoming Firefighter exam, according to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. More than 40 percent of them - 11,918 - were filed by minorities, a figure that Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta called "extraordinary."

That's more than double the 5,569 minority candidates who applied in 2002, according to DCAS.

Some of the credit goes to Mr. Washington, who over the past eight years has been a gadfly for an agency that historically is slow to react to the pressures for change.

That reluctance led the Vulcan Society to file a complaint about discriminatory hiring practices with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2002.

Mr. Washington, backed by Shayana Kadidal, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, argued that the FDNY's written examination had a disparate impact on black candidates. While blacks and whites pass and fail the exam at about the same rate, blacks are less likely to score within the 95th percentile - the usual cutoff for hiring.

The Vulcan Society case rests on the argument that the civil service entrance exam for Firefighter isn't an accurate test of a candidate's skills or potential ability. It's used to rank and eliminate candidates, Mr. Washington has said, but not in a way that's necessarily reflective of a person's true ability to withstand the demands of firefighting.

Training the Real Test

FDNY Chiefs, speaking at City Council hearings on the topic over the past two years, have admitted that the real vetting begins when probationary hires land at the Randall's Island Training Academy.

The EEO probe spurred a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into FDNY hiring practices in 2004. Since then, the FDNY and the Bloomberg administration have taken a series of steps to change the hiring criteria, training tasks and physical and written civil service exams germane to the job. Most of the changes occurred in the past six months.

Commissioner Scoppetta has many times pointed to the jump in minority participation in the FDNY under his leadership.

Each time, Captain Washington has responded with a request for a breakdown of the FDNY's minority percentages. While overall numbers are up, he acknowledges, it's due largely to an influx of Latino firefighters. Black firefighters continue to come on the job at approximately the same three-percent rate that they have maintained for the past decade.

Speaking for the Missing

Currently blacks comprise slightly more than 3 percent of the more than 11,000 active firefighters in the department - there are approximately 340 black firefighters on the job.

For the past two years, every time the FDNY has held a graduation ceremony for a probie class, Captain Washington and the Vulcans have countered with a press conference held at the auditorium door, underlining that in each class of more than 100 students, less than a handful are black.

"I tell you, it's been fun to watch a man as determined as Paul, and with such vision as Paul, help bring the Vulcan Society to where it's at now," said Ret. Firefighter Duery Smith, also an executive board member with the Vulcans.

A Moderate Militant

Although Mr. Washington has a reputation for being militant in his goal of bringing more blacks into the FDNY, Mr. Smith said he's been "the voice of moderation" within the Vulcans.

"It wasn't easy for him to do that in the Vulcans, because he had to find a happy medium between those who wanted to do nothing and those who wanted to be like Nat Turner," said Mr. Smith. "He is like a mountain - he is unmovable when he knows what he is doing is right, even though people try to chip away at him."

Mr. Washington's grit - a trait shared by his older brother - isn't necessarily a product of their environment. Both men enjoyed a fairly bucolic upbringing on Staten Island, attending Catholic school and enjoying the fruits of middle-class life.

Civil service runs in the family - their paternal grandfather survived the Great Depression with seven kids by working for the U.S. Postal Service. Their father, who passed away a few years ago, found a job with the Fire Department in August 1956.

Didn't Bring Job Home

Neither Washington brother remembers their father talking to them about the hazards or enjoyments of the job. For many years he was stationed at Engine Co. 69 in Harlem and he worked through the riots that broke out in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. He didn't bring them to the firehouse - not even when he got stationed closer to home on Staten Island.

"My sense is that my father was very proud of what he was doing for a living, but he was not the type of man who would talk about it," said Captain Washington. "He didn't encourage us or discourage us from applying - I think he told us to take the civil service tests for many jobs, but he was really neutral in terms of telling us what career to pick."

Growing up in a racially mixed environment opened the door for a few scrapes, Mr. Washington said. He recalled his early years as "racially tough" at times.

But the solid paycheck provided by his father's city job - supplemented by a second gig driving a truck for a shipping company - made life comfortable. It was a reality neither child forgot when they grew old enough to start thinking about their own choices. They also have a sister who is a civil servant in Philadelphia.

'A Great Job'

"I really love this job, and that's why I push so hard to get blacks in," Captain Washington said. "I'd like to see them sharing in it. It's great on so many levels - the salary, it helps build strong families, you get time off to spend with kids, you get respect from the community, and you get personal satisfaction from doing a job that's all about helping others. It brings you solidly into the middle-class."

He recalled being jolted the first day he walked into the FDNY Randall's Island Training Academy.

"It was a sea of white - everywhere I looked, just overwhelmingly white," he remembered. "I was hit with how few of us there were on the job."

He joined the Vulcans almost immediately, and quickly became an outspoken and active member. He was vice president for a few years in the early 1990s before making a bid for the presidency in 1998.

Like retired Captain Brenda Berkman, whose willingness to be the public face in the battle to get more women into the FDNY made her the target of early invective, Mr. Washington has earned the ire of some colleagues who find his views racially divisive.

'Can't Be Complacent'

"If you think of all the blacks who have lived and died in this country during the past 400 years, very few lived, or are living, a life as good as we have it now," he said. "Not long ago, somebody who spoke out like me would be run out of town or killed or whatever - a lot of terrible things happened. When you're a black individual who's survived in America, you have to fight against the tendency to be too complacent. I don't feel I've been too militant; certainly not."

Although Captain Washington's outspokenness wasn't shared by his father, his brother sees a family resemblance.

'Same Work Ethic'

"A lot of people don't realize how Paul has dedicated himself to being a firefighter. He went to college and got a degree, he's got a beautiful family with three kids, he's been at the helm of a major organization, and still he has managed to study for exams and work his way up the ranks to Captain," said Kevin Washington. "In his work ethic I see my father."

Captain Washington said he may consider studying for the next rung on the career ladder - Battalion Chief - in his new-found free time, although with three young children in the house, he's anxious to spend more time with his family.

He has no plans to indoctrinate them into the FDNY, however. Like his father, he said he'll neither encourage nor discourage an interest in the job.

But when asked about his youngest - a daughter - he hesitated.

"It's really hard to be a woman in the Fire Department, and even harder to be a black woman," he said, after a long pause. "She may find that there's an easier path she wants to pursue."

If she's anything like her father, she won't settle for easier.