Terrence Jeremy Skeen, a 15-year veteran of the Kansas City Fire Department who spat on a 3-year-old Black boy and called him the n-word, has got his job back.
Skeen, 42, was charged with battery, disorderly conduct and assault on Feb. 26 following the incident at a Hooters Restaurant in Overland Park, Kan.
Witnesses told police the young boy became separated from his family members, who were celebrating a birthday at the restaurant. Skeen spat on the boy and used the racial slur when a family member went to retrieve the child.
The child’s grandfather, Raymond L. Harris, said Skeen also threatened to shoot him after he confronted him, according to The Kansas City Star.
Harris said that he asked Skeen if he spit on the boy.
“F— you, you n—-r,” Skeen reportedly said to him. “I will spit on you. F— you! I will shoot you!”
The manager called the police, but wound up kicking the Black family out of the restaurant instead of the firefighter.
The boy’s great-uncle, Michael Mitchell, said he stayed behind to pay the bill, but the rest of the family left in fear “without even pausing to grab their untouched birthday cake, despite having done nothing wrong.”
Terrence Jeremy Skeen
Skeen’s attorney Tom Bath said the firefighter will plead not guilty and is back at work after being “suspended incorrectly.” His next hearing is scheduled for May 9.
A spokesperson with the City of Kansas City said in a statement on Tuesday that “Skeen is currently working on desk duty, in a non-public and non-safety sensitive role.
“This is a result of internal due process and contractual agreements with IAFF Local 42. This also allows time for due process until his trial on the charges resulting from the incident in Overland Park while he was off-duty.”
According to the statement, the most recent round of required diversity and harassment training for full-time, part-time, seasonal and contract employees started in Nov. 2017, and 84 percent of fire department employees have currently completed the training course.
However, that diversity and harassment training must not have been successful. Skeen racially harassed and threatened a Black toddler.
And, in October, the fire chief sent an email to the department’s administration warning his leadership to not tolerate any retaliation against Black firefighter Tarshish Jones because of his lawsuit win.
Jones claimed the department discriminates in its promotion practices. He was awarded $356,694 in compensatory damages as a result of the lawsuit he filed against the city in 2015.
At the time he filed the suit, Jones had been with the department 17 years. He took the captain’s test five times and each time he was turned down for a promotion. He said over the years he watched others get the job even though some had less seniority and lower scores.
According to the lawsuit, Jones scored high on objective testing, but was “marked down in his verbal testing because he is African American.” And, “similarly situated Caucasian officers of less experience and seniority and lower scores on the written tests, have received promotions to captain, and/or were promoted.”
Jones’s attorney Lynne Bratcher explained the lack of diversity in the fire department.
There are approximately “1,356 employees with the fire department — 13.5 percent are African American, while the city’s population is about 30 percent African American,” Jones told The Kansas Star.
“Of 199 captains, 15 are African American, or 7.5 percent. Of 28 battalion chiefs, three are African American. Of the eight deputy chiefs, one is African American, who was promoted after the lawsuit was filed in 2015. Prior to that, there had not been an African American deputy chief in 17 years,” Bratcher said.
“I think the roll numbers themselves show that inequality exists,” Jones told a local NBC affiliate after the court’s ruling. “So the department needs to address this issue and also the city needs to address this issue.”
Jones said he intended on continuing with the department but wasn’t sure if he would test for captain again.
