Chief Phil Boriskie
The following opinion editorial was recently published in the African American News & Issues. The African-American News and Issues is a Black-owned weekly publication with distribution covering the entire state of Texas.
I write this article just short of 24 hours after a meeting with Houston Fire Chief Phil Boriskie concerning a hangmans noose discovered in the locker of HFD Captain Keith Smith. As many of you may already know, Smith only received a written reprimand for having the noose (he was caught with it twice), and the Black firefighter who reported the incident, Al Bennett, received a written reprimand for usurping the chain of command. A White firefighter brings a noose to work and a Black firefighter reports it. Both received the same punishment.
Welcome to the Houston Fire Department.The Black community has an interesting history with fire departments in America. Images of high water pressure fire department hoses sweeping 70 year-old Black women off of their feet, sometimes breaking their ribs, during civil rights protests are the stuff legends are made of.
The fire departments were the last to integrate Blacks, because fire fighters have to actually live with one another for several days while police officers and postal workers could “stomach integration” for 8-12 hour shifts and then go home. Every since there has been a constant battle in America to eliminate discrimination in fire departments.
Recently, the Supreme Court heard a reverse discrimination case (Ricci vs. DeStefano) concerning biased promotional testing in the New Haven, Connecticut Fire Department. In our one hour long meeting, the chief admitted that a noose was indeed discovered in the captain’s locker. He admitted making the mistake of handling the investigation in-house versus sending it over to the City of Houston’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG office).
Internal investigations are reserved for “small matters.” Evidently, a well-made hangman’s noose on HFD grounds is a small matter. According to the chief, any in-house investigation carries a maximum punishment of a written reprimand. In other words, it was a bungled investigation from the beginning.
On May 10, two firefighters held an inflammatory, profanity-laced discussion about race over the HFD P.A. system. It was heard in over 90 fire stations and later broadcast over the local news. Even though each department issued radio is keyed and coded with easily identifiable technology, the fire chief has yet to find out what firefighters were responsible for this reprehensible tirade. The investigation has been handed over to the OIG’s office, while the captain who was caught twice with the noose is still watching the NBA playoffs at the fire station.
Our fact-finding meeting also educated us to the fact that there is a long-standing philosophy in the Houston fire department that staunchly promotes “The Least Amount of Discipline to Alter Errance Behavior.” So the captain caught noose-in-hand, received a punishment that was consistent with the department’s philosophy. The only issue is that racial intimidation is not behavior that must be altered. It is behavior must be stopped. Unfortunately, the long-standing philosophy was thrown into the bonfire when they disciplined firefighter Bennett for reporting the incident.
The most telling and compelling thing about what we learned in our meeting is that despite the history of racism in fire departments across the country, the Houston Fire Department does not have a zero tolerance policy for racism and racial discrimination. As a matter of fact, the only “zero tolerance policy” that the chief could mentally muster up for the department was for “doing cocaine.”
I commend the job that good firefighters do on a daily basis. I am not totally lost to the fact that it takes courage and personal sacrifice to be a firefighter. I am in no way insensitive to the plight of firefighters across America.
Their value was absolutely proven to the world, if at no other time, during 9-11. However, we cannot wink at racism and flirt with bigotry and expect it to go away. It is a fire that all human beings must fight every single day.
Dr. Martin Luther King often quoted a popular philosopher. He used to say “the hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who during a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” He went on to declare that, “there comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
These aforementioned quotes sum up the reasons for which we speak out against injustices such as these. After our meeting we held a press briefing calling for the resignation of the fire chief. I called for his resignation because, after meeting with him, I truly believe that he is incapable of retooling the department with the needed morale to unify it.
I told him that his “laze faire” attitude about serious matters such as racism is punching a hole in the boat. And lastly, his biased sense of justice and fairness has placed him in a compromising position. Then, to put it plainly, I told him that he was about the “sacrifice the entire ranch for one cowboy.”
My call for Chief Phil Boriskie’s resignation is not a mean-spirited one, nor is it a ploy for personal self-aggrandizement. But according to President Barack Obama, we are in an age of change, responsibility and accountability. Chief Boriskie appears to be a nice guy, but right now the department needs leadership.
Since Mayor Bill White has personally appointed this fire chief he should be the one to personally remove him. He cannot handle the job. We in the Black community do not plan to let this issue die.
There will be a community townhall meeting/public hearing on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 7p.m. to report the actual facts regarding these matters. The meeting will be held at the Black Firefighters Association Headquarters at 4949 Reed Rd. We are encouraging the community to email Mayor Bill White at bill.white@cityofhouston.net about this issue. Write him and demand a response. We are living in an era of accountability where silence is betrayal. Make your voices heard.
Deric Muhammad is a Houston-based community activist who blogs at askbroderic.blogspot.com
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