A black firefighter carrying out city mandated property inspections in full uniform, was filmed and reported to the police by suspicious locals.
Kevin Moore, of Oakland’s Station 24 in California, was carrying out inspections on Mountain Boulevard, to check for vegetation blocking chimneys which can spark deadly wildfires.
Moore said he knocked on doors and rang doorbells first to try and speak to residents on May 16. But if no one answered, he was allowed by law to carry out the inspection anyway, entering side yards and backyards, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
A black firefighter carrying out city mandated property inspections in full uniform, was filmed and reported to the police by suspicious locals
But while doing his job, despite being in uniform and with his fire truck parked on the street, he appears to have been racially profiled and several residents contacted the authorities to report him.
Firefighter Megan Bryan, said she was an acting officer that day and had picked up a call from a 911 emergency dispatcher who wanted to confirm they were definitely doing vegetation inspections after a resident got in touch.
‘I knew that he was the one on that street,’ Bryan said, adding the call made her extremely frustrated adding that no one had ever called the police on her, or her white colleagues, as she tried to do her job.
The same day, a resident forwarded surveillance footage from their home in the upscale Montclair hills neighborhood, to an Oakland police community liaison officer.
They sent it on to Vince Crudele, who supervises the firefighter’s inspection program.
He said it clearly showed Moore ringing the doorbell before conducting the inspection.
‘It’s obvious he’s doing an inspection. Kevin’s wearing his blue wool firefighter pants, he’s got a radio and (a department) jacket and shirt on,’ Crudele said. ‘It’s unfortunate that somebody would mistake an Oakland firefighter, a professional who would go into harm’s way every day to protect citizens, as someone who was there for criminal intent.’
He added that California Fire Code allows firefighters the right to conduct exterior property inspections while residents are not in, but they had made efforts to make the community aware of the scheme first through neighborhood groups and leaflet drops.
Another occurred recently, according to Bryan, during the inspections.
Kevin Moore’s colleague Megan Bryan (pictured) was furious to receive a call reporting Moore for doing his job
Moore had knocked on the front door of a property, and waited a minute, but when there was no answer he called out ‘Oakland Fire!’ and entered the yard which had no gate.
He was noting the potential hazards when he turned around and found the occupier on the front steps of the house, recording him on their cellphone.
The resident demanded to know what the firefighter was doing in his yard.
‘We’re here doing our annual vegetation inspection,’ replied Moore, who was once honored, as part of a group of firefighters in 2008 for ‘bravery and heroism’ for jumping into a ravine to save a ten-month-old baby flung from a car when it overturned.
‘Then he asks for ID. I say no problem. He takes a picture of my ID and says I need to get a different one. I’ve had that ID for years. It’s kind of dark, and I’m more of a dark-skinned black guy, but you can still see me.’
Moore told him if he was worried, he could simply check the big red fire engine parked out on the street.
The firefighter added that he always makes an effort to be seen when he is entering people’s backyards as he doesn’t want to startle them.
‘That’s why I always call out, ‘Hello! Hello! Oakland Fire Department!’ Because I want to be heard. I just don’t want somebody to look out their window and see somebody in their backyard. I’m not trying to be incognito.’
His fellow firefighters from the Oakland department have condemned the racial profiling and Bryan says that she will pair with Moore for future inspections, so he can take notes and she can do the yard walk through.
In a lengthy Facebook post, she described how one man demanded two forms of ID from Moore, despite the fact that he was in full uniform and on duty
But she added that it shouldn’t be their job to have to work around other people’s racism.
‘It’s our work to do with other white people, to check our implicit biases and racism,’ she said. ‘It’s not fair to him, and it’s actually not safe for him to be going into these backyards due to the sociopolitical climate.’
The actions of the residents have been condemned by both the president of a crime prevention council and Glenview neighborhood association, Allan Brill, and Dan Robertson, president of the Oakland firefighters union.
Capt. Damon Covington, president of the Oakland Black Firefighters Association, called it ‘extremely unfortunate’.
The incident comes amid a flurry of racial profiling incidents.
Earlier this month, a white woman dubbed ‘Permit Patty’ for her love of the rules, called the police on an eight-year-old black girl selling water after a game in her own front yard in San Francisco.
And in April, back in Oakland, a woman called the police on a group of African Americans enjoying a BBQ because she claimed they were using a charcoal grill in the wrong place.