I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question(s).
As an observer of Baltimore city politics for the past few years, I have no doubt this came from the office of Mayor Martin O’Malley. He is now Governor of Maryland.
I don’t understand it either, the raindog. What are you trying to say?
Well, why are you ranting, here, if you have not even done your basic homework to know who you’re ranting at? 
I am not really doubting that some sort of “social promotion” is going on. I was just curious as to whether we knew where the bad decision was made so that I could decide whether to join the recreational outrage. I’m not that excited about ranting against “them” when I have no idea whether “they” represent an institution (at some unknown level) or some personal prejudice.
Lower standards are bad. I have not yet seen who lowered the standards. I’ll wait for that information before I express hostility toward some unknown entity. ::: shrug :::
You mean you actually wait until there is a suspicion of impairment? You do not take invasive actions without probable cause? How foolish of your department to not test every person who walks in the door at the beginning of every single shift!
I am not going to make a big deal about the stupidity of U.S. drug laws, but I am not that impressed with a society that makes stupid laws and then whines when those laws have disparate effects on separate groups within society.
The basis of your post, if I understand it correctly, is that objective criteria should be followed in the hiring of fire fighters. Namely, do they have the necessary abilities to do the job? (without regard to gender or race) In other words, if the “job is to drag said fat ass down three flights of stairs in the blazing heat of a fire” , than accepting inferior applicants----in this case applicants who couldn’t “drag said fat ass down three flights of stairs in the blazing heat of a fire”----- has the effect of reducing the effectiveness of the fire department. (albeit because of noble intentions; increasing racial/gender diversity)
I’m suprised that no one has brought up the obvious point that had Ms. Wilson been accepted, she ultimately may have put the lives of other citizens at risk. The loss of her life is a tradegy, but how many other Ms. Wilson’s are out there right now—in dangerous jobs they are ill equipped to handle, and certainly less qualified than the superior applicants that were passed over in the name of diversity?
Huh? Posts 2-5 all cover that obvious point. And you quoted post 5.
It was the City of Baltimore, and former Mayor (now Governor) Martin O’Malley. The public outcry over an all-white class of firefighters was such that they had to basically ‘dumb down’ the written test and make changes to the background checks. People were saying that having an all-white class in a city that is mostly black was an ‘insult.’ 
Racheal Wilson had no place being in that class. She was physically unfit, and had shown a tendency for removing safety gear in times of stress.
It’s not known (at least to the public) why she was admitted to the recruit class when she failed the agility test twice (and performed worse the second time, yet!), but that alone should have been enough to exclude her.
the raindog, I’m not sure what you’re trying to ask, but given WhyNot’s comment:
I can answer that. I’m a woman, the same height as the FF recruit who died (but I don’t weigh nearly as much as she did).
When I took Firefighter One, there were no special considerations made for my gender or for the fact that I was nearly 20 years older than the other females in the class. I had to do everything everyone else did: haul heavy hose up and down stairways, climb ladders, carry ladders, throw ladders, crawl though dark mazes, ‘rescue’ classmates and lifelike dummies, carry heavy equipment, roll what seemed like miles and miles of heavy wet hoseline… and do all of this in 60 pounds of gear.
We did a rescue exercise in which we had to rescue classmates from a window and move them down a ladder. I was paired with a classmate who was about 6’2" and probably 200 pounds. He was in the window and I had to get him from the windowsill to the ladder, and down the ladder with my knee in his crotch, and my arms up under his armpits, while holding the side rails of the ladder. It was actually easier than I thought.
One thing: you’re more than likely not going to have to drag someone’s fat ass down three flights of stairs. You’re trained to look for the closest exit, even if it’s a window. Then you get them up and out the window and use the ladder technique I described above.
That is correct.
Yes, still correct.
Except that I did bring that up. In the post you quoted and then later dissected. And several other people brought it up as well.
…uh-huh…yeah, I think we’re still on the same page here…
So, again, I don’t understand your questions in post #19.
I saw the claims made regarding the written tests and the background checks. OTOH, Ms. Wilson was clearly deficient in the physical requirements–as in she actually failed existing standards on more than one occasion. In regards to the question why she was permitted to continue, I have not yet seen any information indicating what person, following what rule or personal whim, permitted her to remain at the academy following those failures.
The lowered written standards and background checks may or may not be relevant to anything. Has there been a rise in criminal behavior among the BCFD since background checks were scaled back? Has there been a rash of idiotic mistakes made by firefighters leading to injury or property loss that has been tied to newly hired firefighters failing to understand what they were supposed to have been taught? Such events would cast suspicion on the purported lowering of standards. On the other hand, the standards for physical performance (lowered or not–that has not been mentioned), were disregarded in the case of Ms. Wilson. Before I get upset that the standards are lower, I would be upset that the standards at any level are being ignored. So my question remains: is the decision to let people stay in the system when they do not meet the physical requirements emanating from City Hall (trying to appease the electorate)? The top brass of the BCFD (to avoid answering tough questions from the mayor or council)? The department heads of the training program (trying to avoid tough questions from the brass)? Or the actions of a single individual who might have acted out of his or her own desire to promote diversity or perform a favor for a friend or to let Ms. Wilson fail on the job (if not quite so disastrously)?
I agree with you, but I also have to wonder how hard it is to lay off the stupid bong for a month so one’s system will be clean for a drug test.
Applicants who can’t quit using alcohol, nicotine, or illegal drugs long enough to get them cleaned out of their systems are not people I want fighting fires in my city. I’ve had no problem keeping clean at various times while interviewing.
My basic homework would be what, you smarmy fuck? Breaking into City Hall and rifling through the file cabinets? :rolleyes:
Because there is no smoking gun, no absolute final individual upon whom we can pin the blame, let’s pretend it’s unactionable. That’s being obtuse.
Now you’ve digressed into idiocy. Your village called-they miss you.
danceswithcats, I apologize if I missed this in the discussion that followed, but you opened by saying that National Standards were violated in the training incident, and that you don’t want to minimize their role. However, you conclude that it was her demographic qualities that led to her death.
Can you resolve these assertions for me? How is it clear that it was her characteristics and not the violations of standards that led to her death? How do you not want to minimize them, yet also leave them out of your conclusion about what led to her death?
What standards were violated? Could they have led to the death of the fittest candidates as well?
In simple terms, FF Recruit Wilson did not pass the physical evaluation, period. She failed it not once, but twice. She was unable from a physical standpoint to perform skills necessary for the job description. As such, she shouldn’t have been present at the burn evolution.
In previous training evolutions, FF Recruit Wilson had removed the mask of her SCBA in moments of stress, which is a safety violation. Part of being a professional firefighter is working as a member of team. If an individual exhibits behaviors which are potentially injurious to themselves, and cannot maintain appropriate demeanor, they also pose a risk to other members of the team. She failed to demonstarate that ability, and as such should not have been present at the burn evolution.
The linked report in my OP is 121 pages, plus 19 appendices. I did not wish my OP to be overly long. You are free to review the linked documents. Could the fittest candidate have escaped? That calls for a guess on my part, but I will answer, yes.
One cannot conclude, with absolute certainty, that even the fittest individual(s) will escape every fire scenario. That presents a logical impossibility. What the fire service has done is to establish baselines of training, physical health, and conditioning such that if followed, will result in safe operations in service to the public for the majority of the time.
Fire suppression cannot be made risk free. The risk is managed to an acceptable level by proper training, appropriate equipment, and personal evaluation. The latter part is what wasn’t done.
Hopefully that addresses your query.
Well, you could simply see whether any reporter has actually done that work for you. We have clear evidence that a person who failed to pass a physical–twice–was permitted to stay in the program. There has to be a person, a real live human being, who failed to send Ms. Wilson packing after each failed physical test. I would hope that the Baltimore news agencies whould be setting up a major hue and cry to discover that person and to then determine whether that person acted on his or her own initiative or under orders and, if under orders, whose. Perhaps the news people in Baltimore prefer to take your approach of simply moaning aloud that bad things happen without being concerned to discover the responsible party. (And while you have expressed a clear antipathy to the mayor, your insistence that you do not have access to records the mayor did not keep seems to be simply a way to dump the problem at the mayoral mansion without considering other possible agents.)
I have not pretended that the problem is not actionable and I think you are silly for pretending that I have. I have simply pointed out that there is, indeed, a final, (or, perhaps, initial) individual who is clearly to blame for Ms. Wilson continuing in a program in violation of department standards. Identifying that actual agent to discover whether it was a personal decision or one that came down from higher up will go a long way to ensuring that the practice is stopped while making vague grumblings about a years-old mayoral decision is little more than RO.
So, just to be clear: because I actually believe that the city of Baltimore (or the state of Maryland) should examine why rules are being flouted–because regardless whether the physical standards had been maintained or lowered, Ms. Wilson was permitted to remain in the program in violation of some regulation while failing those standards, (otherwise there would be no “failure” associated with her performance)–I am an idiot, while you display intelligence and sagacity for wringing your hands and pretending that a decision to lower written standards is the culprit behind permitting a person to continue in violation of remaining physical standards.
(I would suggest that I am not the idiot in this situation.)
Sweet fucking Og, Tom, if it was known who actually said “Let’s lower the standards so Racheal Wilson will be allowed to pass and become a firefighter” don’t you think we would be actively Pitting that person or persons?
What is your fucking mission here? We can’t take issue with this unless we have A Named Suspect? Dude, you are nitpicking for bullshit.
We don’t need to know who the fuck ever authorized her advancement to be able to say it was a bad decision.
Who fucking cares if we don’t know this yet. What is your fucking point related to the OP?
God bless Racheal Wilson and everyone else who asks to sacrifice their lives in order to save others. God damn those who would attempt to sweep this example of bravery and altruism under the rug of long-discredited racial stereotypes.
Anybody else read the report the OP cited?
In enumerating the reasons for Wilson’s death, it cited some fifty violations of NFPA standards (without boring anyone, let it just be said, the fire department had to be called in to respond to the fire department’s own training exercise), including the issuing of substandard equipment to Wilson just before she was ordered to enter a burning structure. Of the fifty different problems, Wilson’s lack of physical fitness constituted one of them. Strangely, the physical fitness problem stems not from a recent lowering of standards, but from the fact that the physical test, developed several years ago, has never been validated and so cannot be enforced. Given the almost exclusively white-male administration and hiring of the BCFD, it seems unlikely that this policy was developed in order to favor new minority applicants, as opposed to, say, old white firefighters.
There is no indication that Wilson would have failed either the written or background test now or in the old form. There is no indication that the physical test was designed to favor minority applicants. There is evidence that the Baltimore Fire Department has historically favored whites, and that recently the department has been criticized for not hiring minorities, and that as a response the department hired a black woman trainee and killed her. The truly delusional among us seem to take this as an indictment of minority applicants for public-safety work. Oh, well.
I asked a simple question for my own information in post #6. Bibliocat responded to my question with some information, then expressed a personal opinion. I responded in post #12 that I was not challenging the opinion expressed, then noted that I was still curious regarding the facts of the situation.
Following that, danceswithcats came screaming back into the thread hurling invective at me because I dared to ask a question instead of simply joining in all the Recreational Outrage.
Note that I have made no effort to tell anyone else that they were out of line to be upset. Had I been provided the answer to my question, I’d have wandered off informed. Had I been ignored, I’d have wandered off under the assumption that the question did not yet have an answer. Either way, I have not denigrated anyone else’s Recreational Outrage nor have I asserted a claim that such outrage should follow some path determined by me. OTOH, if the RO participants are not able to answer the quesation I asked, (entirely likely, since the story may not yet be old enough to have become the object of a thorough investigation), they are perfectly welcome to maintain a dignified and honest silence on the topic rather than resorting to expressing silly rage and personal condemnations toward me just because I asked a question.
Not really. Your answer seemed more to pirouette repeatedly away from a direct response. I found The King of Soup’s response to be much more direct and forthright. Seems to me like you left a great deal out of your OP and continued to leave it out when asked specifically about it.
But I’m so very glad you didn’t want at all to minimize any of those other reasons for the incident.
There have been plenty of minorities in the Baltimore City FD - it was just that in 2004 they had a class that happened to be all-white. The minorities that passed the written test that time could not pass the background check or drug test.
The response was not to ‘hire a black woman.’ The response was to change the testing and admissions process. They re-wrote the written exam (they made it easier), and loosened the requirements on background checks.
When it comes time to actually select recruits for each new class, rather than just look at written test scores, agility test scores, physical fitness and background, they try to make up a class that is ‘racially diverse.’ It’s no secret that they pride themselves on the diversity of their classes.
Racheal Wilson had failed the agility test TWICE, and yet somehow got in - and no, tomndebb I don’t who to blame and I don’t know how it happened. My guess is that she was pushed through and someone let her slide into a spot, all in the name of racial diversity.
I just can’t imagine how she passed the basic medical examination.
192 pounds at 5’4" ?
Now that is some overweight for a female.
If perhaps she had shown a reduction in weight and an improvement in performance over some time, then maybe she was in with a reasonable chance, but someone who does not address such a basic problem that is crucial to success in a particular field is simply not the sort of person that has the personal attributes to deal with the kninds of stress this work will bring.
This is not a fattism issue, its about looking at yorself and assessing your capabilities, and doing what it takes to meet the requirements by addressing the issue, not avoiding it and lowering standards.
No matter how much some folk desperately want to achive certain things in life, it a fact that they never will, and in this case she was never ever going to make it - she didn’t have what it takes.
This should have been recognised long ago and she should have been given an ultimatum, “do the following or leave”