Supreme Court Firefighter Ruling (and the Local Beat)

The main stream press may have missed the role of a "nefarious" character in a recent Supreme Court decision. The ruling favored 20 firefighters who said the city of New Haven, CT violated their civil rights by throwing out the results of promotional exams. The New Haven Independent, an online paper, pointed to the behavior of Rev. Boise Kimber as possibly causing the civil rights violation.

Title

Was he the culprit?

Lede

Three of the Supreme Court justices who voted against New Haven in Monday’s landmark firefighters case ruling zeroed in on one character they saw playing a nefarious role: the Rev. Boise Kimber.

Nutgraf

From the start, the New Haven 20 — the one Hispanic and 19 white firefighters who sued to have the exams’ results honored — argued that New Haven’s DeStefano administration scuttled the test because of political pressure. And they specifically mentioned Kimber in their lawsuit. Rev. Kimber, a prominent vote-puller for Mayor DeStefano in past elections, sits on the Board of Fire Commissioners. He played a vocal role at the Civil Service Commission in arguing to have the test results ignored.

The story details the past corruption of Rev. Kimber and his connections to the town mayor. After a recent drive with the radio on, I suffered through 10 minutes of talking heads drone on about the implications of the Supreme Court ruling. After reading this article I found it easier to grasp that it started with New Haven's simple, day-to-day corruption.

More importantly, it shows the power of the beat, the reporter for the story has been covering New Haven for 20+ years.