Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell called for more urgency from city leaders to improve diversity in public safety agencies on Tuesday. She also reiterated recommendations that the city study the civil service process, move forward with the creation of a cadet program in the fire department and get more transparent about the challenges at hand.
"The number one issue for me is transparency around these issues. To get the data that actually demonstrates that our police, fire and EMS are not reflective of the demographics of the city of Boston, I had to go through hurdles. I'm in the system, it shouldn't take so long," said Campbell on Boston Public Radio. "This should be on our dashboards when you walk into City Hall, where you can see the numbers ... then we can all get on the same page on what we do to change it."
Boston is a "majority-minority" city, with white residents representing only 46 percent of the population, according to a 2018 Boston Planning and Development Agency analysis.
But the U.S. Dept. of Justice shows that public safety agencies don’t reflect that diversity. Of the more than 2,000 police officers in Boston, 67 percent are white and 13 percent are female. Out of 1,511 firefighters, 72 percent are white and one percent are female.
Boston officials commissioned a report that examined the status of female firefighters and recommended the city establish a fire department cadet program similar to the one in the police department.
Mayor Marty Walsh told Jim Braude on Monday the cadet program for the fire department is going through the process — it will take a hearing at the statehouse to be adopted via special legislation known as a home rule petition — but Campbell said Tuesday the council is waiting for the administration to "demand a hearing" so that process can move forward.
Additionally, Campbell called on city leaders to examine how civil service requirements might hinder women and diverse candidates from making it through the hiring process, and to be more proactive.
"This is not veterans against women and veterans against people of color. Even if we recruited all of the veterans that were women and people of color, it would not be enough to make these departments align with the demographics of the city of Boston," she said. "So we just have a lot more work to do, and its not enough to say we're doing the cadet program. ... We have to be bold and courageous."
