Widow's Suit: Fire Drills Meant to Cut Minorities

JAMEL SEARS: Was training too demanding?

The widow of a Probationary Firefighter who died during training last year will file a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, claiming that timed fire drills for the latest academy class were instituted to weed out minority candidates.

Jamel Sears, an African-American, collapsed and subsequently died Nov. 11 while training at the Fire Academy on Randall's Island. The Vulcan Society of black firefighters—a coplaintiff in a Federal lawsuit against the city alleging that two previous written entrance exams were designed to eliminate minority candidates— claimed timing cadets in fire drills and in running exercises were new features for the last Academy class that did not have training value and were meant to impede the progress of minorities.

Mr. Sears' class, which was graduated in December, was the most diverse in the department's history.

'Not Timed in Fires'

"We're not timed in fires," Vulcan Society President John Coombs said last week in a phone interview. "We're not timed on a series of events. And being timed doesn't make you a better firefighter. So what was the need? It's just unheard of."

JOHN COOMBS: Suspicious of timed exercises.

Firefighter Coombs argued that even though traditionally physical exams for Firefighters have been scored based on the speed with which candidates completed a series of tasks, the department at the Fire Academy implemented new timed firefighting simulations—which created a morestressful training regimen—to prompt a higher drop-out rate, especially among the minority cadets, and that the intensity of these drills contributed to Mr. Sears' death. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled that Mr. Sears' death was partly due to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Mr. Coombs said he met with Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and Chief of Department Salvatore Cassano prior to the death of Probationary Firefighter Sears to express concerns about the new timed exercises at the Academy.

'Looks Racially Motivated'

"We said to the Chief, 'It doesn't look good at this time, especially with a lawsuit pending against you. It looks like it's racially motivated,' " Mr. Coombs recalled. "It was really ridiculous. The Fire Department had the opportunity not to go this far."

Capt. Paul Washington, a former Vulcan Society president, said that the current six months of training for Probationary Firefighters is much more strenuous than the two months he went through 20 years ago.

"There is no doubt that the physical training that's going on with the new probies is far and above what it needs to be," he said. "It's gone to extremes now, and not coincidentally at the same time the percentage of people of color on the job is increasing."

Captain Washington admitted that the new class yielded 35 percent minority graduates, the highest percentage in the department's history, but claimed that the FDNY was "resistant" to African-Americans and Latinos becoming Firefighters.

Claim Racist Attitude

"A lot of this stems from an attitude that because so many blacks and Hispanics come off from this last list, there's got to be something wrong with them," he said, alleging that this prompted the new exercises.

Mr. Sears's widow, Sherita, is a Police Officer assigned to the 41st Precinct in The Bronx who previously served in the Department of Correction. She is reportedly asking for $10 million in damages in her wrongful death lawsuit.

FDNY spokesman Jim Long responded to the accusations in an e-mail: "Mr. Coombs is wrong when he says timing doesn't matter in firefighting, and his claims of racial discrimination are completely without merit. The department spent millions of dollars trying—successfully— to recruit more minorities (35 percent in Firefighter Sears's class); to suggest the department was then trying to 'weed them out' is the furthest thing from the truth."

Mr. Long added the Vulcans were contradicting themselves because they have long advocated that physical testing be made more important than the written exam in order to increase diversity.

"This is a physical job," he said. "They're arguing both sides of the issue."

A Uniformed Firefighters Association spokesman did not comment on the case, saying that the union does not intervene when family members of a dead Firefighter enter into legal proceedings with the department concerning that person's death.

The FDNY has had a contentious history with race within its ranks. The department's firefighting force is about 11-percent African-American or Latino, while departments in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles are more than 20-percent minority, according to attorneys in the Federal case.