By Kerry Cavanaugh
The Daily News of Los Angeles
Copyright 2006 Tower Media, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
In a first step toward a class-action lawsuit, a veteran female fire captain filed a claim Wednesday alleging the Los Angeles Fire Department permits gender discrimination, creates a hostile work environment and allows retaliation against firefighters who speak out.
Capt. Alicia Mathis, a 17-year firefighter, said she filed the claim because she has watched female firefighters be harassed, over-aggressively drilled and injured on the job while perpetrators receive virtually no punishment.
Rookie and black firefighters are also mistreated and hazed, with little intervention from top brass, she said.
“This is a call to action to the community. We must fight for the integrity of the department,” Mathis said during a news conference outside City Hall. “The public expects firefighters to have the highest degree of professionalism, and we must not ever let them down.”
Change is goal
Mathis and her attorney said they may not pursue a class-action lawsuit if the department makes significant changes, including creating a system to track harassment complaints and establishing an independent panel to investigate complaints.
Dozens of civil cases charging on-the-job harassment are pending against the Fire Department.
The City Council agreed Wednesday to pay $320,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a firefighter who said she was sexually assaulted by a captain while on the job.
The department and Fire Commission are also working with a federal mediator to reform the disciplinary system, but some are frustrated with the slow pace.
Jerry Thomas, a 31-year department veteran, called for the mayor to remove Fire Chief William Bamattre, who was promoted to the top job in 1996 to help the department deal with abuse allegations.
“This management team we have didn’t do the job, won’t do the job and has to be removed,” Thomas said. “The fire chief has had 11 years to eradicate the problem, and he hasn’t.”
Chief responds
Bamattre said in a statement the department is reviewing the issues raised in Mathis’ complaint.
“The Fire Department takes this and all workplace-environment issues seriously,” the statement said. “It has been, and remains, our goal to create a positive workplace environment.”
Fire Commission President Dalila Sotelo said Wednesday she couldn’t speak about the complaint, but she said the commission has been working nonstop on a plan to change the Fire Department culture.
“I’m very confident that what we’re doing is going to have longstanding impacts,” Sotelo said.
A 1995 report found rampant sexual harassment and discrimination within the department. Spurred by an anonymous letter detailing cases of hazing and mistreatment, Controller Laura Chick initiated two audits that found many of the reforms enacted after the scandals of the 1990s had been abandoned.
Chick said weak leadership and a broken disciplinary system encouraged harassment and hazing, and she recommended an internal affairs unit to investigate discrimination complaints.
“Why does the city have to keep learning the same painful lessons over and over again? It’s 2006, and the city shouldn’t have to be sued to get us to treat women employees equally, fairly and respectfully,” Chick said Wednesday in a statement.
Mathis, who works as a liaison with the Department of Building and Safety on construction projects, said she was denied a transfer to a new location despite having more expertise and seniority than the person who got the job.
“I know this action was in direct retaliation to my speaking in front of the Fire Commission and identifying what the public has come to know -- that many in our Fire Department are racist, sexist and homophobic.”