One of the Denver area’s largest heating and cooling companies is in full damage-control mode amid one of the most egregious instances of racism in recent memory. One of the Denver HVAC company’s now-fired managers was caught on-camera saying that the company doesn’t service a certain area of Denver because it’s a “colored neighborhood.”
Last week, KDVR in Denver got a disturbing phone call from an employee of Mile High Heating & Cooling in Westminster, a Denver suburb. The employee said that Mile High Heating and Cooling has a standing order not to send anyone to the Montebello neighborhood, a diverse neighborhood in northeastern Denver. A producer with KDVR’s “Problem Solvers” investigative unit answered an ad the HVAC company put out for appointment setters. Watch that story here.
One of the managers, a woman named Andrea, put the newly-hired appointment setter right to work making cold calls. The producer noticed something odd on the Tuesday call list–a column with the words “Montebello 80239–never call.” Andrea’s explanation is absolutely breathtaking.
Andrea: Do you know anything about Montebello? You don’t live there, do you?
Producer/appointment setter: No.
Andrea: We call it “Mount Ghetto.” (laughs) Um…colored neighborhood.
Andrea went on to say that it wasn’t worth the effort to cold-call anyone in Montebello, since no one there pays their bills.
Apparently Andrea’s appointment setters didn’t just avoid cold-calling the Montebello area. It looks like she ordered other employees on her shift not to respond to service calls from that neighborhood either. KDVR had Pam Jiner, a longtime Montebello resident, call Mile High Heating & Cooling to check on her furnace. When the operator asked for Jiner’s address, Jiner gave her address as being in 80239–the zip code for Montebello. She was told a scheduler would call her back.
When it was apparent no call would come, KDVR’s Heidi Hemmat called the company on her cell phone and requested the same furnace check. However, she gave a different zip code in Denver. Within literally seconds, a dispatcher came on the line to schedule her right away. Jiner was dumbfounded at what she described as “blatant, outright racism.” Her neighbor, Duane Topping, was equally aghast. He probably spoke for everyone in Montebello when he said that “stereotypes are born of ignorance.”
When Mark Silverstein, legal director of the Colorado ACLU, saw the video, he said that the practices KDVR uncovered were blatantly illegal. He said they almost certainly violated several local ordinances and Colorado statutes, and added that “there are even federal laws” against this sort of behavior.
When KDVR tried to speak with Andrea, she scurried into the office Paul Ryan-style. When she finally came out, she referred KDVR to Kevin and Kasey Dykman, the father and son who own the company–but they wouldn’t talk either in what was arguably the loudest silence that has been witnessed in the Denver area, if not in all of Colorado, in a very long time. The company’s Facebook page has been scrubbed clean–except for a slew of angry comments.
On Thursday afternoon Kevin Dykman finally responded. In a press release, he condemned Andrea’s “inappropriate” and “insensitive” comments and said that she had been fired. The elder Dykman characterized Andrea’s actions as “an isolated incident” that ran counter to his company’s “culture of respect and inclusion.” He also promised to have his staff undergo cultural sensitivity training in order to ensure that there’s never a next time for this behavior.
Dykman probably had no choice but to break his silence. Mile High Heating & Cooling is a Carrier authorized dealer, and there was no way in the world Dykman could have kept his relationship with Carrier as long as Andrea was on the payroll. Not only that, but he may have saved himself from a business-destroying lawsuit. I have to wonder, though–how long had Andrea been engaging in this blatant discrimination? Regardless of how long it happened, though, the employee who blew the whistle on this deserves a medal.
