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Maybe you remember Michael Newman. For a few months,
in the summer of 2005, he made news as the guy who wanted to be a
Springfield firefighter but was disqualified by something hinkey in his
background check. What set him apart from the scores of other would-be
hosers who fell into that same category was the fact that Newman had
already passed background checks given by the Illinois Department of
Corrections, Wells Fargo Bank, and the Springfield Urban League, as well as
the U.S. Navy, which had given him top-secret clearance.
One other difference: Newman is black. The
Springfield Fire Department has taken a lotta heat for having only two
African-Americans on a force of 200 firefighters. Newman scored high enough
on the written test to be ranked in the top band. He had already passed the
physical and the psychological evaluation. What caused the Springfield Civil Service Commission
to disqualify Newman? To this day, we don’t know. The mysterious
transgression that prevented him from earning the right to strap on a
caution-yellow raincoat and 40 pounds of equipment and enter burning
buildings, possibly to save lives, has never been revealed. The quest to find out is what brought Newman into the
news [see “Smoke and mirrors,” July 28, 2005]. Like many
people, he assumed that reporters must have some kind of magical power that
allows us to get information that normal people can’t obtain, and he
came to us for help getting the answers. When we couldn’t find out,
Newman hired an attorney. Eventually city officials offered to provide the
information to Newman, provided that he would first sign a waiver promising
not to sue. He refused. I didn’t hear from Newman again until late last
year, when he called to tell me that he was in a police academy in Chicago,
training to be a law-enforcement officer in his aunt’s hometown,
suburban Harvey, Ill. He graduated as the outstanding recruit in the
Chicago Police Department’s Metropolitan Recruit Group 06-103A, which
included officers hired by police departments in the suburbs of Orland
Park, Grayslake, Niles, Hillside, Chicago Heights, Forest Park, Park
Forest, Arlington Heights, Elmwood Park, and the University of Illinois at
Chicago. Newman was sworn in Dec. 26. He didn’t last long as a Harvey cop. As anyone
who can Google undoubtedly knows, Harvey’s police department operates
by its own set of rules, which until recently included keeping a wooden
paddle in the jail for use on school-age troublemakers. The department is
so bad, a multiagency task force that included the Illinois State Police
Public Integrity Unit raided the Hervey Police Department’s files in
late January, seizing reports that enabled the task force to solve several
murder cases that the HPD had allowed to languish. Newman and three other HPD officers — two
rookies who had been his academy classmates and longtime lead detective
Tony DeBois — left Harvey to join the police force in the adjacent
suburb of Markham. They were sworn in April 4.
For anyone keeping count, that makes another
background check Newman passed. Markham Police Chief Paschal Crawford says he found
nothing in Newman’s history that would disqualify him from being a
peace officer, much less a firefighter. “I don’t understand it.
I don’t know what criteria they used to eliminate him,” he
says. “We did a background check, and he came through with flying
colors. He seems like a really nice young guy. Maybe I’ll have to
pull him in and grill him!”
Kent Gray, a member of the civil-service commission
— but one who was absent when the panel voted on Newman — says
he has no idea what disqualified Newman and wishes that city officials
could tell him. “Personally, if I had my druthers, I would
allow a candidate who has not made it through the background investigation
or the psychological evaluation to know why they didn’t,” Gray
says. City attorneys have convinced the panel that it’s not a good
idea, but Gray says that the commission has altered other procedures since
— and, in part, because of — Newman’s disqualification.
Now, when commissioners review a police or fire department
candidate’s background information and psychological evaluations, the
name, race, and sex of each applicant has been removed. “Now, no
matter what the civil-service system does, we do it equally to
everybody,” Gray says. Newman, however, isn’t eager to try his luck in
Springfield again. “I spoke with one of the retired black officers in
Springfield, who told me Springfield could do one of two things to your
career: either enhance it or totally destroy it,” he says. It’s
a chance that, for now, he’s not ready to take.
“I’d like to stay somewhere where I know
I’m appreciated and I don’t have to worry about that type of
thing,” he says. “I figure, as a police officer, I
shouldn’t have to worry about the department. I should worry about
the crime on the street, not about my career being in jeopardy every day
that I go to work.”
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Apr 12-18, 2007.
