Former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran isn’t sure about his next move, whether he stays in the firefighting biz or shifts to a career winning souls. “God hasn’t spoken to me either way,” he said.
But Mayor Kasim Reed has spoken. And his message to Cochran was as clear as a five-alarm fire: “Get the heck outta here!”
Actually, Reed didn’t speak to Cochran, an H.R. manager did the dirty work. Regardless, Cochran was fired very publicly this week by an irritated mayor who questioned the judgment of a chief who wrote a book with “naked” in the title.
Cochran, who pronounces it “nekkid,” was suspended in November after the city got complaints from employees that his biblical morality tome “Who Told You That You Were Naked?” was bashing gays. One passage said that God, and the fire chief, were against “uncleanness — whatever is opposite of purity; including sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism, pederasty, bestiality, all other forms of sexual perversion.”
I had to look up pederasty in the dictionary. It ain’t good.
Reed took umbrage that Cochran did not stay mum during his 30 day suspension. The mayor got especially testy — even for him — when he said that Cochran’s supporters were besieging him at home with non-biblical taunts. One even called him an anti-Christ.
“This is not about religious freedom; this is not about free speech,” Reed said. “Judgment is the basis of the problem.”
Cochran, in an interview, said he wasn’t running his mouth during his time off, he merely gave a speech at a church and it was picked up by the media. “It was not to draw attention to my case,” he said, adding that he doesn’t want to vilify gays. “I even have family members who have that lifestyle.”
Cochran shouldn’t have a big problem landing somewhere either as a chief or as the latest standard bearer for the Christian Right, a godly man who is a victim of an overzealous, arrogant and duplicitous Left, one that is led by an anti-Christ mayor.
To those of us on outside, Cochran’s firing is the latest Battle for America’s Soul. Inside the department, however, firefighters aren’t talking about religious liberty, gay rights or even bestiality. Instead, they’re talking about a chief who came in to change the culture of a department.
For months, I’ve heard whispers that morale in the 1,000-firefighter department was in the toilet. The word was Cochran was hampering firefighters’ efforts to do their job, that he was discouraging them from charging into burning buildings to save lives and property. Some said they only saw him when passing by his portrait at the Public Safety building.
The rank and file were rankled when the chief explained his strategy to new recruits: “There’s a fine line between valor and a 4-day suspension.”
Stories abound about firefighters who got the latter when, in earlier years, they would have received a medal. Atlanta firefighters revel in their reputation as an interior-attack department, one that goes into buildings or up on roofs to fight fires, proudly comparing themselves to a couple suburban departments that don’t. “Cobb wouldn’t go on a roof if Santa Claus was up there,” one fighter said.
Cochran wanted to change the department’s DNA.
“He saw the disciplinary policy as a training tool,” said Stephen Borders, president of the Atlanta Professional Firefighters union. “But so much of firefighting is a gray area. (With the new policies) you don’t get in trouble unless you act.”
One firefighter, Borders said, was burned on the hands and suspended, only to have it overturned by the Civil Service Board. “They said he was doing the job he was hired to do.”
Cochran, Borders said “was completely an administrator and a politician. He was good at PowerPoints and speeches and plans. He only spent a couple years (long ago) riding a fire truck and never embraced the firefighting side.”
Asked to describe the department’s reaction to the firing, Borders thought for a second and said, “I haven’t talked to anyone of any rank who expresses disappointment that he’s gone.”
However, one battalion chief, who asked that his name not be used, said “I’ve never known there to be a time when there wasn’t a lot of people unhappy with management.”
The battalion chief admits that Cochran was “a headquarters administrator,” but he was one of the best department leaders he has seen. The morale problem is more about Reed and the City Council, he said, because firefighters’ pay has languished and they’re fleeing to other departments or retiring early.
Scott Dove, a captain who retired last year after almost 27 years, took a penalty to leave and now works on a ranch in Wyoming. His exodus was a combination of factors — eroding morale, the flood of experienced firefighters leaving, and directives that kept his comrades from aggressively fighting fires. In fact, part of his leaving was having to fight a reprimand for going into a burning building.
“I think it’s a national trend,” he said. “There’s a saying now, that everybody goes home. But everybody doesn’t go home. It’s part of the job.”
Cochran said his strategies are based on years of scientific studies by Underwriters Laboratories. He said the city last year upgraded its ISO (Insurance Services Office) Rating to Class 1, which allows for lower insurance rates for businesses and homeowners.
“It is more efficient firefighting; it’s safer firefighting,” he said. “It’s not unusual to get push-back when you change how something has always been done. We have to curtail the high-risk cowboy mentality. We have rules of engagement. Firefighters love to take big risks and brag about it.
“Often firefighters are risking their lives when there is no real benefit,” he added. “Often there’s nobody inside, or it’s a vacant house.”
Most houses that burn are in poor neighborhoods and are worth less than $50,000, said Cochran, who admitted he rarely stood at a curb at a fire scene.
“The changes we did could not have been done if I was always going to fires,” he said.
Capt. Dove admitted the game has changed. The blue-collar guys who could work with their hands and saw firefighting as a calling are now often replaced by money managers who got laid off. Fires are way down nationwide and so departments have re-branded themselves as Fire/Rescue units, more often running patients to hospitals than bursting through doors.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” said Dove, sounding like he really didn’t mean it.
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