A second class of recruits hired after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s overhaul of the city’s firefighter hiring process is primarily white and overwhelmingly male, marking little progress toward the mayor’s pledge to diversify the Fire Department.
The 54 recruits, who are scheduled to start training at Terminal Island on Monday, include only two women, the Los Angeles Times reported in an article posted on its website Thursday.
Racial minorities are better represented than in past years, but the administration’s new hiring and screening effort has fallen short of the kind of diversity needed to alter the LAFD‘s overall makeup so it reflects the city it serves, city data show, according to The Times.
The latest hiring figures have renewed calls for reforms to a selection system that has been criticized for nepotism and mismanagement, the newspaper reported. Some are asking for increased funding for efforts to attract qualified women and minorities to the department.
“That’s the key,” Fire Commissioner Jimmie Woods-Gray told The Times. “There’s not enough women and African Americans applying.”
In March 2014, Mayor Eric Garcetti halted LAFD hiring after The Times reported that thousands of candidates were excluded from the applicant pool because their paperwork wasn’t received in the first 60 seconds of a filing period. Many applicants said they had no idea mere seconds would determine which candidates advanced.
Garcetti then supported a reboot of the hiring process that added a lottery to winnow down the large applicant pool. But of the more than 10,000 people who entered the lottery, only 5 percent were women, city data show, limiting the likelihood a large number would advance through testing and interviews to be hired, The Times reported.
Because state rules outlaw government hiring quotas for women and minorities, city officials tell The Times that their best chance to increase their numbers in the Fire Department is to entice more to apply.
— City News Service