KCFD will consider veteran Black applicant for chief after he threatens to sue
A high-ranking Black officer at the Kansas City Fire Department with nearly four decades of experience recently threatened to sue the city, if he was not allowed to compete for the department’s top job.
Ten days after Deputy Chief James Dean emailed his threat to seek a court injunction pausing the selection process, city officials reversed course. On Thursday, they told him they would no longer shut him out of the hiring process because he lacked entry-level firefighter certificates that weren’t required when he joined the department.
The news came in an email an hour after The Star requested comment from city officials for a story about his situation. Dean believes it was no coincidence.
“Here is the email sent at 1:10 p.m. today 10 days after my request and only because they are hearing from you guys and the community,” he said.
Dean is the city’s fire marshal, has two college degrees and is a former instructor at the department’s fire academy. But he does not possess two certificates that are now required for entry-level firefighters but were not a prerequisite when he joined the department in 1987.
Those certificates – Firefighter I and Firefighter II – were among the minimum requirements the city set for fire chief under the current selection process that began last fall. Previously, equivalent experience was taken into consideration for department veterans seeking advancement.
Dean said his experience and training over a long career more than qualifies him for the job, including years serving as an incident commander at fire scenes, overseeing minority recruitment and serving as the department’s safety chief.
Also working against him: He let his certification as an emergency medical technician lapse as he advanced through the department’s administrative ranks. And that, too, is now a requirement for the chief’s position when it wasn’t before.
Wants a fair process
Dean told city officials that was unfair to eliminate long-time department veterans like himself from consideration for the chief’s job when those credentials were not required previously for advancement through department ranks. He cited court decisions that he claims back him up in a series of emails between him and city officials that Dean shared with The Star through an intermediary.
“If this matter is not resolved promptly and fairly, I am prepared to seek judicial intervention, including a request for an injunction to halt the current process entirely, as was done in the cited cases,” he wrote Human Resources Director Teri Casey and LaToya Black, the city’s talent acquisition manager on June 16.
“My objective is not financial compensation, and I am aware the City is willing to suffer the lawsuit financial penalty in exchange for doing this in the current manner. But I want a fair opportunity to participate in the process based on my qualifications and service.”
On Thursday afternoon, Casey wrote Dean to tell him that they city had instructed the city’s recruitment firm, Bakery Tilly, “to allow for an equivalency for the Firefighter I & II certifications.”
Separately, Dean and his lawyer told The Star that he is also taking the administrative steps necessary to sue the city over the pause in the selection process more than a year and a half ago. That permission to sue letter could come from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission could arrive later this summer.
A city spokeswoman said “the city cannot comment on personnel or legal matters.”
Only one Black chief
Dean and another internal candidate for the job during that earlier application window – Deputy Chief Laura Ragusa – have claimed publicly that it was unfair for the city to shelf their applications and keep Ross Grundyson on as interim chief until now when his job was supposed to be temporary.
Former City Manager Brian Platt said no one who wanted the job on a permanent basis should apply to be interim chief to replace Donna Lake when she retired 17 months ago. Grundyson, who was an assistant chief, said he would be a placeholder, as he did not possess a key qualification to become chief at the time.
He had no college degree. Since then, that college requirement has been dropped and Grundyson has told City Manager Mario Vasquez that he wants to stay in the job through the end of next year.
About 50 people had applied for the job prior to the June 10 deadline for applications. Dean was informed the next day by the executive recruitment firm the city hired that he would not be interviewed.
Ragusa recently filed a wide-ranging whistleblower and employment discrimination lawsuit against the city. Among her allegations is that she was subject to discrimination on the basis of her gender when the city refused to even interview her for the job during that first application window.
She has since reapplied and is in the pool of candidates for the job.
Dean claims he was discriminated on the basis of race, as he and several other well-qualified Black candidates were also excluded for consideration on the first go-round. Now he is being shut out entirely, he said.
During the department’s long history, all but two fire chiefs were white men, and Dean said he believes there are people within the department who want to keep the status quo in a city where a third of the city is non-white.
“Let’s be real, he said in an interview. “They don’t really want a department that reflects the city that it serves. They want it to be where they’re in control.”
Kansas City’s only Black fire chief, Ed Wilson, served from 1980 to 1989. Lake, the first and only woman to become fire chief, held the job slightly more than three years.
This story was originally published June 26, 2025 at 2:25 PM.
