Two city council committees will hold hearings Wednesday on offensive radio transmissions over the Chicago Fire Department's radio system.
Ald Isaac Carothers (29), chairman of the Police and Fire Committee says "There's no doubt the department has had many, many racial problems in its history and they're not going away."
The council's Human Relations committee will also hold a hearing.
Ald Patrick O'Connor (40) says "The department is becoming younger and younger and those people coming in today are not the same people working...who were part of firefighter families that went back generations.
Nevertheless, said O'Connor, "the department has to stand up, and not just the brass but the rank and file and say: 'We're not going to tolerate this anymore.'"
O'Connor is among several council members calling for the firing of anyone in the dept who utters racial slurs.
Commissioner James Joyce or another top fire official may attend today's meeting of the Police and Fire committee.
Fire Commissioner Joyce is apologizing for the latest string of racial and ethnic slurs to be broadcast over fire department radios, and is promising strong discipline if the person responsible is found.
The last time someone uttered a racial epithet over a fire radio, it was in the context of a sentence. This time, the speaker uttered nine racial or ethnic epithets back-to-back in six seconds over the main North Side Fire department frequency. Nothing else was said during the transmission, broadcast at 10:50 a.m. Monday.
Commissioner Joyce believes the message was a prank, and calls it "egregious."
"This appears to me, just by the listening and the tone, to be someone thumbing his nose at the fire department administration over the heavy discipline" administered after the first incident two weeks ago, Joyce said.
The message was long enough to post its signature at the city's 911 Center as it was broadcast. Joyce said those who would have access to that specific hand-held radio were being interviewed first. But he won't rule out the use of outside, stolen or lost equipment.
Nor, at this point, would Joyce rule out the possibility that someone other than fire department personnel uttered the epithets. As a result, Joyce refused to disclose to which fire company the radio was assigned.
Each company is assigned a radio in its truck and one handheld radio. Joyce said the department has 875 portable radios, and at any given time, between five and 10 are listed as lost or stolen.
Earlier Tuesday, O'Connor said at Northside Prep that if the Fire Department proves that firefighters were responsible for the latest racial epithets, they should be fired.
"In this day and age, you have people doing stuff like that, I mean that's as close to a hate crime as you can get in terms of somebody that's got a publicly funded radio out there making racial slurs," O'Connor said.
"That person should be fired, because it's not a joke," O'Connor added. "It's not cute, it's not funny. Those people need to be fired and the people who know that they're doing it, they need to step forward and say they're not going to tolerate it anymore."
Carothers (29th), chairman of the Police and Fire Committee, said during a phone interview Tuesday that he and two other aldermen -- Mitts and Edward Burke (14th) -- drafted a resolution condemning the use of racial slurs by any city employees in response to the first incident.
He said the resolution would be discussed at a committee hearing at 1 p.m. Wednesday. Carothers said he has also asked Joyce and a fire official familiar with the department's union to attend the meeting to discuss possible disciplinary action for those responsible for the radio broadcasts.
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