Was it a Mistake?
By Dan Murphy
Last week, the promotion of Yonkers firefighter Richard LaPeruta to lieutenant resulted in an outcry across the city and the county from leaders in the African-American community who wanted LaPeruta fired, and not promoted, for a racist post he made on Facebook two years ago.
New information obtained by Yonkers Rising includes the fact that LaPeruta was to be promoted earlier this year, but was passed over after objections came to Mayor Mike Spano from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and City Councilwoman Shanae Williams.
Spano decided not to promote LaPeruta just a few months ago, but for the latest set of promotions, which would have been the last opportunity to use the list of firefighters the mayor can pick from for promotion before it expired, LaPeruta was selected for promotion.
The debate over what should be done with LaPeruta has been ongoing since his post on Facebook in 2017, which included a photo of an African-American man with his arm around an ape. Above the photo was written: “Father reconnects with son after abandoning him 13 years earlier.” LaPeruta posted above the photo: “First and second on the new YFD test.”
LaPeruta was suspended and had 75 days of salary withheld. The NAACP and President Andrea Brown expressed outrage, and many in Yonkers agreed. At the time, LaPeruta made no public apology.
Yonkers Rising has learned that, despite a call for sensitivity training in the Yonkers Fire Department, many in the YFD did not take the matter seriously. There were even reports that black-and-white bakery cookies were handed out at some firehouses to turn the matter into a joke.
LaPeruta has been on the YFDs promotion list since 2018, and has been passed over several times. As written above, he was passed over earlier this year, but was eventually promoted at a ceremony held this month.
News of LaPeruta’s promotion came with the same shock and surprise that came with earlier attempts to promote him. A press advisory on YFD promotions initially did not include LaPeruta’s name, but a second advisory did – after word got out about it and the mayor was asked about it.
Spano has commented on the reasons he decided to promote LaPeruta.
“While I detest what he did and we hit him as hard as we could hit him – legally, short of firing him – he took his medicine, he apologized, and he has been an exemplary firefighter up to and past that,” said Spano.
“I condemned it pretty badly,” the mayor said of LaPeruta’s actions. “I hit this officer, this firefighter, with some very difficult challenges. We suspended him within two days. We took pay away from him – 75 days of pay. Now, that is unheard of.
“I passed him over for promotion 10 times. That means he’s lost 10 positions in retirement and seniority,” continued Spano. “That’s going to have a tremendous effect on him. My guess is he’s probably paid restitution, in lost salaries and lost position, he’s probably given $20,000 or $30,000.”
On Sept. 11 of last week, LaPeruta released an apology letter.
“I would like to give my heartfelt apologies to the City of Yonkers, the department, and to all the people who I may have hurt with my tasteless and insensitive post on social media three years ago,” he wrote. “As a Yonkers firefighter, I know we are held to a higher standard. My lapse in judgement that day does not personify who I am… There are many young people of color in Yonkers who are eager to join the fire department. I regret that my actions may have made them believe they would be unwelcome.”
The fact that LaPeruta’s apology came three years late for many, and also released Sept. 11, drew criticism from the clergy in Yonkers and the Vulcans, an African-American firefighters organization, who wrote to Spano.
“This letter is to advise you that we do not accept the validity of the letter of apology attributed to firefighter Richard LaPeruta and provided to Christopher Eberhart for his story that appeared in the Saturday, Sept. 14 edition of The Journal News, on News 12, in The Yonkers Tribune and a host of other media outlets,” wrote the Vulcan Society of Westchester, Inc.
“The convenient timing of this letter is suspect. It insults and disrespects the collective intelligence of the community of Yonkers to produce this bogus self-serving letter as justification to promote an obviously unqualified individual.
“The date chosen for this bogus apology letter is particularly offensive. The date of 9/11 is a sacred and solemn day, both to mourn and celebrate those who lost their lives back on Sept. 11, 2001, in the terrorist attacks, and those who continue to suffer the after effects of that horrible day. The audacity of dating this sham letter on this sacred day of sacrifice further demonstrates LaPeruta’s selfishness, his lack of judgement, and his complete disrespect for the fire service.
“It is for this reason we view this letter with the upmost cynicism and contempt,” continued the Vulcans. “We are appalled at your lack of sensitivity to our community and we demand that you rescind this questionable and irrelevant letter dated on 9/11 immediately.”
Spano also argues that he couldn’t fire LaPeruta because “we knew that PERB (the state’s Public Employment Relations Board) would never allow that to happen, so we went (with) the next best thing,” which was a suspension and loss of pay.
The Rev. Frank Coleman, pastor of Messiah Baptist Church and president of the NAACP Yonkers Branch, called that reasoning “baloney.”
“People sue all the time, and they lose,” he said. “If you believe it’s an immoral thing for someone to do, to compare human beings to apes, do what needs to be done. If you get sued, you get sued.”
Coleman added that LaPeruta has still never apologized to the African-American community in Yonkers. ‘He never came to anyone of color and spoke to them and gave them any apology at all,” he said. “It’s the black community that he needed to come to. How ‘exemplary’ are you, a day before your promotion, when you write that apology letter?”
City Councilwoman Shanae Williams joined in the objections to LaPeruta’s promotion, and is already working on ways to make sure something similar doesn’t happen again.
“This is like a slap in the face,” she said. “In other places, he would’ve been fired on the spot. But not in Yonkers – not in the good ol’ boys’ club… How do I know he’ll put his neck out there for people he sees as apes?
“I am surprised that the mayor did this. But I was not on the City Council when this incident happened. But let’s change the culture in the fire department…My duty moving forward is to make sure we address the culture in the F.D. that says this type of behavior is Okay. We need to look at ways to create policies that protect people from bigotry and from racial acts.
“We also need to look at diversifying the fire department,” continued Williams. “Right now (there are) only 9 percent African-Americans in the F.D., when there is 18 percent of African-Americans in the city. We want to make the entire fire department reflective of the entire city and that way, through training and education, this type of behavior won’t happen. And we won’t let it happen again.”
If LaPeruta were not to be fired, then some argue that Spano could have passed on his promotion and let the promotion list also expire.
“The United Black Clergy of Westchester and the NAACP Yonkers Branch and the entire African-American community is outraged and believes LaPeruta should have been terminated, not promoted,” officials and leaders said in a statement. “Further actions will be taken by the NAACP-Yonkers Branch as result of this promotion.”
