Maryland’s first Black deputy chief fire marshal says he is done tolerating the disrespect he has endured for years and has received the green light to proceed with a lawsuit against its state police.
Derek Chapman has accused the Office of the State Fire Marshal, a division of the Maryland State Police, of maintaining a long history of institutionalized racism and discrimination against him, according to DC News Now.
Last Tuesday, Magistrate Judge A. David Copperhite decided that Chapman’s claims had validity, and the case could proceed, NBC News4 Washington reported. State attorneys were unsuccessful in their attempts to get the case dismissed earlier this year.
“It made me feel good because someone’s listening,” Chapman said Wednesday outside the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, according to NBC News4. “When you look at the whole entire case, and you see it, it blows people away. But this is what happened, and now someone’s listening.”
Chapman initially brought the case to federal court in February. Court records claim he has experienced “bullying, harassment and adverse retaliatory actions” from white superiors, DC News Now reported.
Chapman became the state’s highest-ranking Black man in the agency in 2018. At the time, OSFM brass said the promotion was well deserved, and they wished him the best in his new role and future endeavors.
However, Chapman said, he has had racial slights aimed at him throughout his longtime career, and the comments worsened when officials promoted him to the historic post, according to DC News Now.
When he joined the fire department about 25 years ago, Chapman recalled, a white firefighter told his training officer: “I see you got your monkey behind you.” Decades later, after being named deputy chief, he wanted to get someone acknowledged for Black History Month, he said, and a high-ranking staffer compared black labs to Black people.
Chapman claimed the agency suspended him for over a month after he filed an internal affairs complaint alleging he had been subjected to racist statements, NBC News4 reported.
According to DC News Now, Chapman also said officials wrongly blamed him for a backlog of cases, which he attributes to a staffing and resource shortage. He noted that he took particular pride in “closing” a backlog of cases during his tenure.
“I mean, yeah, I’m behind in reports. I’ll take that hit,” Chapman shared, DC News Now reported. “But we have to go across the board. Why are we behind in reports? We don’t have the staff. The reporting system needs to be updated.”
Some of the harassment and discrimination occurred when he was fighting renal cancer and, more recently, when he had back surgery, he says. Chapman is on leave for that surgery, but he returns to work next month — and he’s bringing his $4.8 million lawsuit with him.
Several Black state troopers, both former and current, complained in February 2022 that they were consistently subjected to harsher punishment and passed over for advancements. According to NBC News4, the claims were the subject of a Justice Department investigation started last July.
Chapman said being a fire marshal was his childhood dream, and he’s hoping to end a “good ole boy” structure within the Maryland State Police.
“In order to fix a problem, you have to admit you have one,” Chapman said, DC News Now reported. “There’s nothing I can do but go through the proper channels and file lawsuits and this type of reaction and speak up for myself.”
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