BALTIMORE — Family members of two Baltimore City DPW workers comforted one another outside city hall Friday afternoon. They were both brought there by grief and a desire for justice. Their loved ones died on the job, collecting trash.
“We are here for you. Whatever you need, we will exchange numbers, and we will be for one another,” Shantae Carroll, sister-in-law of Timothy Cartwell, told the family of Ronald Silver II.
Silver suffered a heat stroke in August. Cartwell was struck by a co-worker driving their trash truck through a narrow alley on Monday.
"My brother-in-law was not just a trash man. My brother-in-law was a man of courage, of good deed, of love, of support. of giving. He was kind, he was gentle, and he was a man that stood for what is right,” Carroll told reporters at the news conference.
Neither family knows exactly what happened. What they do know, is the DPW had documented safety issues.
Over the summer, worker complaints prompted an investigation by the city's Office of the Inspector General. The reports that followed detailed unsafe and unsanitary working conditions at several DPW facilities, mostly related to heat safety.
After the death of Ronald Silver, the city hired an outside law firm to conduct an independent review, which found that the problems went much deeper.
Employees described a culture of intimidation: if you complained, you were given more difficult or demeaning jobs or denied benefits like overtime. Some supervisors even admitted to allowing employees to begin their route while intoxicated, fearing threats of violence.
Lawyers for Conn Maciel Carey LLP wrote in their report:
"CMC identified a lack of supervisory training, responsibility, and accountability as one of the common refrains that the firm reported hearing. Supervisors told CMC that they believed it was the responsibility of frontline workers to account for their own safety and security. This issue was compounded by a lack of leadership training, particularly for those individuals who had been promoted from within the ranks of DPW."
On Friday, community activists joined the victims’ family members in their calls for change.
"There's a mentality that people at the bottom don't matter; they don't count,” former city councilman Lawrence Bell said.
“Stand up for yourselves, complain, do something about it, activist Sean Simms encouraged DPW workers. “But they're scared to because of the retaliation.”
DPW officials have previously told WMAR-2 News they are committed to enhancing safety protocols and holding people accountable. Plans were already in the works for renovations and overhauls of some of the facilities cited in the Inspector General's reports.
A final report - expected to be hundreds of pages long - will be published in the next few months.
Both Silver's and Cartwell's deaths are being investigated by Maryland Occupational Safety and Health. Cartwell's death is also being investigated by the Baltimore Police Department.
Patrick Moran, President of AFSCME Maryland Council 3, the union that represents DPW employees, said in a statement to WMAR-2 News:
“We are again in mourning due to the loss of Brother Cartwell. We continue to demand full transparency from the City in terms of data and concurrent investigations. We also continue to demand that they bargain and respond in writing to our proposals from August when initially unveiled a series of changes our members need to make the workplace healthier and safer. Facilities, equipment, and training need to be overhauled immediately. The in-the-line-of-duty deaths of Brother Silver and Brother Cartwell were both avoidable.”
