Gerald Alston had won once again, though final victory for him remains elusive.
Alston is a Black veteran firefighter in Brookline whose battles with the town over his firing can rightly be described as epic. On Tuesday, the state’s highest court upheld an earlier ruling in his favor by the Civil Service Commission. The Supreme Judicial Court confirmed that Alston was fired illegally.
Alston had expected that a ruling might come this week, but he was still caught off-guard when his daughter called to give him the news early Tuesday.
“I’ve been holding these tears in forever,” she told him, in informing him that he had finally prevailed.
“When she told me, it hit me like a ton of bricks,” Alston said. “Maybe the judicial system in Boston is not what it used to be.”
Alston’s saga began in 2010 when a white colleague, Lieutenant Paul Pender, uttered a racist slur in a voice mail he left for Alston. Pender was barely reprimanded for his behavior, while complaining about it sent Alston’s career into a shambles.
Once he complained about Pender, the town’s old-boy network went into overdrive to protect Pender and drive Alston away.
By 2013, he was on leave, saying he no longer felt safe in a job where you depend on your peers for your very life. In 2019, the Civil Service Commission found in his favor and ordered him reinstated with back pay — that’s the ruling that was upheld Tuesday.
Alston never asked for this 11-year war, but Brookline — that progressive bastion — has been relentless in prosecuting it. Year after year, Select Board after Select Board, town officials have been adamant in doing the wrong thing when it comes to this case.
“The folks on this board have done the wrong thing every step of the way,” said Select Board member Raul Fernandez, who believes the city should settle the case. “It’s remarkable how wrong so-called leaders have been on this case, and I hope we get new leadership that will think differently.”
I hope so, too, because Alston has become a man with little to show for his hard-earned victories. While he has been reinstated, he has never returned to work. Not being on active duty has meant making far less than if he were actively on the job, because he receives base pay with none of the overtime or other perks he would be subject to.
And besides that, this man who was described by superiors before this case as an excellent firefighter has had his dream snatched away from him. Given town leadership’s staunch support for his adversaries in the department, it’s no wonder that he doesn’t trust anyone to have his back.
Alston still has a federal court case pending seeking punitive damages for his suffering. And, make no mistake, the decision Tuesday was a ray of light.
“There’s more to do before we can say we’re out of the woods, but the ball is definitely rolling in the right direction,” Alston told me.
One thing Alston has seen change in his long battle is the way he is perceived in Brookline. A few years ago, he felt like a pariah. But as awareness of what he went through has grown, he has drawn support that he never expected. He called the change in the public support he has received “overwhelming.”
One of his supporters is Jesse Mermell, the former Brookline Select Board member and congressional candidate. Alston reached out to her after she publicly apologized in 2019 for voting years earlier with the majority for Pender’s inadequate punishment. They started talking, first on Facebook and then in long conversations on the phone, and have become friends.
“He has done great service to our community in forcing us to look at ourselves,” Mermell said. “But we can’t overlook that it’s come at an immense cost to him and his family.”
What happens next is up to the town. It can continue on the ruinous path it’s followed for the past decade. Or it can finally find a way to close the books on this long-running outrage.
As it happens, there is an election in Brookline in just a week, and the embarrassing handling of this case has emerged as a major issue in a race that is pitting the old guard against a group of progressives.
I’ll be pulling for whoever wants to finally do right by Gerald Alston.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at adrian.walker@globe.com. Follow him @Adrian_Walker.