By Rich Lord
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
Copyright 2007 P.G. Publishing Co.
In an effort to reverse a decades-long trend that has turned a mostly black organization into a very white one, Pittsburgh’s ambulance service is planning to aggressively recruit and help train minority paramedics.
The emerging hiring drive is the first concrete step by Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s administration to address declining diversity in city public safety bureaus.
“We are not seeing the diversity we should be,” said Emergency Medical Services Chief Robert McCaughan. “We want to reflect the community we serve, and quite frankly we are not getting the applicants to do that.
“We’re looking to partner with some people outside of Pittsburgh EMS to provide opportunities for not only minority recruitment, but also training.”
Just 22 of 174 employees of the EMS Bureau are African Americans, and none are from other minority groups. That means one in eight paramedics and administrators is non-white, in a city in which minorities make up one-third of residents.
That makes EMS slightly more diverse than the Fire Bureau, and less diverse than the Police Bureau. All three have become steadily whiter in recent years. The EMS Bureau has no minority employees with less than five years on the force, suggesting that as veterans retire, diversity will decline.
The bureau has done a slightly better job attracting women, who represent one in five paramedics. It has seven female paramedics with less than five years tenure.
The bureau’s declining diversity is felt most acutely by those who remember that the city’s ambulance service started out as a nonprofit effort called Freedom House that worked mostly in minority neighborhoods.
“You had a predominantly black organization, one or two employees were white,” said John Moon, assistant chief of the Emergency Medical Services Bureau, who started out at Freedom House and is African-American. Now, 32 years after city government absorbed Freedom House, “the trend has reversed itself, and you have to wonder why.”
Part of the answer may be the need for state certification, which requires 1,228 hours of classroom, field and clinical training. A would-be paramedic has to pay for that himself prior to applying with the city.
By contrast, both police and firefighting recruits get free training through the city, and get paid while doing it. Police applicants must have 60 college credits.
“Nobody wants to work for EMS when they can make more working for police and fire,” said Jeff Vesci, president of the Fraternal Association of Professional Paramedics. First-year paramedics earn $26,992 a year, versus $33,551 for firefighters and $37,413 for police.
Whereas a handful of openings used to attract hundreds of applicants, now the qualified candidates barely outnumber the available slots, Chief McCaughan said. He is trying to hire 10 to 12 paramedics, and expects to have to interview just 15 or 20 qualified applicants, once agility tests and background checks narrow the field.
He said he doesn’t yet know when the impending minority recruitment drive will start, nor who the training provider will be. He said the push will look something like a 1991 effort in which the city recruited 15 African-Americans and women, and provided free paramedic training, plus a modest salary. Most finished the training and went on to become city paramedics.
David Morris, 48, was one of them. “In nine months, they trained you in every aspect of the job,” he said. For him, that’s turned into a 16-year career.
“This is a great career choice, if you’re about trying to make a difference, getting involved in the community, trying to make an honest living,” he said.
He said the problem with the 1991 effort was that it was a one-time thing that only temporarily boosted diversity.
He said the bureau should ensure that this time, it’s a sustained program. “That way the numbers would even out.”