By james art 
A test for one of the top jobs in the Hialeah Fire Department is under scrutiny, prompting an internal affairs investigation after one of the candidates who failed the test complained that another candidate was cheating.
The complaint arose after the exam – which anyone seeking to be promoted to battalion chief or assistant chief of operations must pass to be eligible – was administered in August 2023.
District Fire Chief Robert Ortega filed a complaint with the Hialeah Police Department’s Bureau of Professional Compliance two months later. Ortega, one of six candidates who took the test, was one of three who failed.
The exam consists of a written and an oral component, each requiring a minimum score of 70 out of 100 to pass.
In an affidavit to the police department’s internal affairs division, Ortega said “a certain officer was given the answers to the oral exam in order to get an extremely good grade.” Although Ortega did not mention the applicant by name, in his original complaint he identified the person he believed “received an unfair advantage” as the one who scored 100 percent on the test. The only candidate to receive a perfect score on the exam was Edward Altidore, chief of the department’s professional standards division.
“An unfair advantage was given to Altidor by someone else over the other candidates and that’s not ethical,” Ortega told the Miami Herald. He said department heads like Altidor have an unfair advantage in promotions. “They have a ‘palanca,'” he said, using the Spanish word for leverage, a slang term for high-ranking benefactors.
In his statement to Internal Affairs, Ortega also complained that the questions on the oral test did not match the learning material outlined in the Hialeah Fire Department’s Professional Standards Manual. District Fire Chief Vladimir Kanarev, another candidate who failed the exam, corroborated Ortega’s claims in his own statement to Internal Affairs, saying the course material was inconsistent with the oral portion of the exam.
Ortega told the Herald that fire department management had “created a Frankenstein test” that favored certain applicants, noting that 50 percent of applicants failed.
He complained that “there is something of a culture” in the department, where senior officials are helped when they appear for promotion exams. They “don’t open a book and get a perfect score,” he added.
Altidore declined to comment for this story, referring a reporter to his attorney, Naomi Levy Garcia.
“He did not cheat and did not have an unfair advantage,” Garcia said in a statement to the Herald.
After Internal Affairs concluded its investigation on Aug. 27, Hialeah Human Resources Director Elsa Jaramillo-Velez asked members of the city’s personnel board to throw out the list of eligibility criteria from the 2023 exam results.
The Personnel Board is considering at least three options: throwing out the shortlist and retaking the oral exam; rejecting the results of the entire examination or retaining the current eligibility list which would allow the candidates who passed the disputed examination to be eligible for the post when a vacancy occurs. The board has yet to make a decision, saying it is awaiting word from Fire Chief William Guerra.
Altidor’s lawyer argued that there was no legal reason to cancel the promotion list.
The list of passers is important, especially at this time, because a few vacancies may lead to the opening of a battalion chief position. Guerra himself plans to retire in May, which will open up other leadership positions at the top.
The battalion chief exams were created by Deputy Fire Chief Raymond Malin, Guerra told internal affairs investigators. Malin retired shortly after being questioned by the Home Office about the fraud allegation. He did not respond to a Herald request for comment.
According to the internal affairs investigation, the third candidate who failed the test, department head Emmanuel Lewis, was given a copy of the oral exam from previous years before the test. Hialeah’s human resources department told city officials they gave Lewis the copy of the old test because “he was the designated contact for the fire department regarding the exams.” While the exam Lewis took was not identical to the one later taken by the six applicants, HR director Jaramillo-Velez described it as “very similar.”
Jaramillo-Velez found emails showing Luis forwarded a copy of the oral exam to Altidor before they took the test, according to the internal affairs investigation.
At a personnel board meeting last month, Lewis denied any wrongdoing. “I failed the oral portion of that exam, so to suggest that there was some kind of cheating,” he said, is “absurd and disrespectful.”
Guerra, the fire chief, told the Herald he would make a decision soon, but did not say whether the exam would be repeated.
The city’s firefighters union told the Herald that an investigation showed there was an “unfair advantage” in the administration of the exam and that the chief should take disciplinary action, which could include firing employees and removing candidates from the promotion list.
Some members of the department, including some high-ranking officers who asked not to be named, told the Herald they believe the chief has shown favoritism to Altidore in the past, including removing him from day-to-day firefighting duties and assigning him to Head of Professional Standards Division.
Guerra denied showing favoritism to Altidore.
“How can anyone say that?” said the chief. “It’s not true.”
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