Carlito's Way

Growing up in Echo Park, Carlitos didn’t know what to do with his life. Then, at 21 years old, a police officer friend of his told him he had the heart of a fireman. “So, I knocked on the door of the local neighborhood fire station and these guys took me in. They were all white, big forearms and mustaches – but they weren’t critical. They didn’t care I was some Mexican kid with tattoos.” That lack of judgment made a strong impression on him.

Because for him; being a fireman is all about that acceptance, that brotherhood. The guys he met taught him the values he passes on to his team now. At the top of that list is being humble. “Being a fireman isn’t about wearing the T-shirt to bars, sporting the bumper-sticker, flashing the badge. You’re out at a fire – it’s about how you do the job.”

And that job ain’t no walk in the park. The average number of calls during a 24-hour day is 15 to 16. Firefighters work from the minute they get to the station until 11 PM when they go to sleep in tiny cots. That’s when the toughest calls come in. “If there’s only 1 at night, that’s a good day and we’re well rested. If there’re 5 or 6, we’re beat. By the next day, we’re fatigued, and this may go on for 3 days in a row, before you get a day off.”
 

Besides that schedule, firefighters see some horrid conditions. They aren’t just sent in to fight fires, but to get in the middle of shoot-outs, save toddlers who’ve been raped by children not much older than them, help old ladies having heart attacks. The coverage of Carlitos’ station includes Pico Union and McArthur Park, some of the most densely populated and diverse areas in LA. Their old high-rise apartment buildings contain packed units housing 4 to 5 families, many here illegally. Kids play in their drug and rat infested hallways. These guys are as much community workers as firefighters.

Then, there’s the danger. On the field, firefighters don’t have time to figure something out, they have to know it; react on experience and instinct. “If I’m trying to save a woman and her two little kids, and taking them out a smoky hall – they’re blind for a moment. I’m the one who takes them through it, and once they can see again, they have hope again.”

The problem is that certain chiefs today care more about how a firefighter looks than how they act. They want that ‘image’; buff, clean-cut (and often blond). Carlitos is Mexican and covered with tats, not quite their stereotype.

In a town like LA, where racial tensions are never far from the surface, the department has seen its share. “When I started as a fireman, I came onto a department that was mostly white and known for discriminating against blacks. That racism led to harsh repercussions and inevitably, to big changes.”

Yet today, there’s a new kind of racial profiling going on. Since a string of lawsuits have left city administration and chiefs in defensive mode – they have been focusing more on appearance and containing potentially intimidating behavior (say, while training rookies to react no matter what the circumstances) than on competence in the field.

“We’ve had to change how we train our new members. You can’t create realistic training conditions that mimic the intense pressure of the fire-ground, where victims in life threatening situations can be pretty intimidating. Because if we pressure people to the point where they consider it hostile and complain, the administration will back them up, as opposed to the veteran crew. So, we have to bite our tongues and keep people around who shouldn’t be in the department.”

The heightened bureaucracy is also killing the culture of bonding that firemen need to get through the dangerous work they do. It’s eliminated the use of hazing as a tool to evaluate new members’ strength of character and thickness of skin. “Like when you go up to some girl in a bar, you might give her a hard time, just to see how she reacts, and if she can’t deal – you’re like – I don’t want to start anything with her. But, if she rolls with the punches, she’s cool.” Same thing goes with recruiting. Messing about with a firefighter who can take it, shows what will happen in a tight situation.”

Another example of the administration losing focus on what the job is all about is targeting people with tattoos, because of their appearance, not their performance.

For seven years, a tattoo protocol assignment has been weaving its way through the department. It finally passed arbitration recently, and Carlitos and other men are about to learn their fate. “They’re probably gonna tell me to cover up my arms.”

Asking a guy to cover up his tats is like asking him to cover up his soul. The tats are his skin. They are his identity. And it’s not like Carlitos hasn’t thought about what his tattoos represent before. “I did some serious questioning in my earlier years at the department about my tattoos. I understand that some people have reactions to the way I look, like maybe some 80 year old lady who’s never seen tattoos in her life, but I tell her - you want me to be the one to help you because I’ll give you the best service you could get.”

But things turned personal against Carlitos when he discovered that an officer from another shift told a group of guys, ‘There’s an off-color shit that runs a loose ship’ and ‘we got a captain who is covered with tattoos.’
 
 “When a chief officer says stuff like that, there’s a reason – to poison their opinion about me, and when he says I run a loose ship – he’s getting into my performance. My normal style would have been to approach him directly. But I know this guy and his history. So, I filed an official complaint with my chief who then launched an investigation into this ‘hostile environment.’

Ironically, this officer was in the middle of giving a directive on not making such comments about a guy with a prosthetic leg (can’t call him ‘peg leg’) while remarking on Carlitos’ appearance. The results of the investigation determined there was no conclusive proof that the officer had done anything wrong.

But, at least Carlitos got to speak with an employee relations expert on the topic. He initiated a new conversation about tattoos and their culture, what the fire department really should be all about and how to get that back.

The administration may feel it has the right to present a certain image, but Carlitos disagrees. “There’s never been a civilian who complained about how I look or the service I provide. In my mind, the image should be: I’m diverse. I kill the stereotype. Hell, I use it as a recruitment tool. Kids thinking about joining gangs see me – and, it makes them think they’ve got other possibilities out there, off the streets.”

This is 2007. Everyone has a tattoo – even Paris Hilton has tattoos. “But, the administration’s losing focus on what’s important - our job. We’re not a company. We’re not a bank. We’re laborers. We’re blue collar workers and we’re different – our lives depend on each other. Yes, there’s a rank and file, but respect should come from brotherhood and from having proven yourself, not just having the badge or what you look like.”

Standing in the doorway of the fire station recreation room, consisting of two paper-piled-high desks, a bunch of mismatched easy chairs, a TV set and an old wooden, unused pool table, Carlitos recalls how he originally felt like he’d artistically sold out by joining the department. He also did lots of soul searching in his early years, about how he looks. But, when he met Mister Cartoon, legendary tattoo artist, he saw a guy comfortable in his own skin. That gave Carlitos the confidence to be the same. Now, on breaks from the fire station, he inks out of Mister Cartoon’s 6th Street tattoo shop.

Along his personal journey, he found a way to incorporate the two things he loves and that define him as a man. It seems like the fire department should do the same; re-embrace its inner core and forget about the external crap.

“Most people don’t ever love what they do. Me, I love being a fireman. And, I love being a tattoo artist. I’ve been blessed.”