Woof!
That’s all Bruno could say. He was speechless as he watched the City Council Wednesday approve paying two white Fire Department captains $1.6 million alleging reverse discrimination for being suspended over spaghetti laced with dog food being fed to black firefighter Tennie Pierce as a bad taste joke.
Pierce got $1.5 million for the prank, alleging racial discrimination. Total bill to the public with lawyer’s fees: $5 million plus — a small portion of the costs of lawsuits over misconduct in the LAFD.
It’s unspeakable!
And the City Council certainly did its best not to speak about it, nor did it give much of a clue in the online Council files. The video, complete with Bruno barking angrily in the background, shows how the CAO’s office, City Attorney’s office and the Council avoid rf any mention of what the case was about before voting to approve the payoff. The online files for Item 27 hardly give a clue.
Who can blame them? The Tennie Pierce case symbolizes all that’s broken in City Hall: Lack of workplace discipline, total mismanagement, complete disregard for taxpayer money, the incompetence of the political leadership.
Go back to October 2004 in Fire Station 5 in Westchester when Captains Chris Burton and John Tohill the 12-member platoon under their command had some fun playing beach volleyball and then returned to the station for dinner and some high jinx.
For a prank — what else is there to do in a Fire Department where racial and gender discrimination were rampant and the average salary is more than $100,000 with 90 percent pensions after 30 years — dog food was put in the spaghetti served Pierce.
The captains, earning more than $200,000 each, loved a station house where there crew was having fun through the endless boring hours waiting for emergency calls.
“Pierce was a big-time, and politically incorrect, prankster himself,” Chris Pelisek in the LA Weekly reported, “spraying water into the face of one strapped-down firefighter, smearing
shaving cream around the groin area of another, and gleefully laughing
at a third who was wrapped in a sheet on which hazers had scrawled, “Oy
Vey! I’m Gay!”
“At the (captains) trial, Pierce — noticeably peeved by the proceedings — admitted
that he participated in pranks, most notably one two days before the
dog-food debacle in which a firefighter was strapped down and doused
with A.1. sauce. Pierce, 52, also told the jury that he was at first
suspected of being the perpetrator behind “Ratgate,” in which a dead rat
was put into another black firefighter’s locker.”
The captains bought the dog food, they claimed, as a “joke trophy” because Pierce proclaimed himself “big dog” for triumphing in the volleyball games. Firefighter Jorge Arevalo slipped some of the dog food into Pierce’s spaghetti.
By the third bite, Pierce thought something was wrong with the meat sauce and saw everybody laughing. He stormed out angry and everyone, including the captains, apologized.
Just another prank, end of story? Hardly.
Pierce, who told a black colleague on the day of the incident he didn’t think it was racial, found a lawyer who sued for racial discrimination and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo worked out a settlement that the City Council merrily approved. The sum: $2.7 million plus attorney fees that pushed it past the $3 million mark.
As editor of the Daily News I jumped all over the story. It was outrageous and I told the mayor so after lunch at a Valley deli, challenging him to veto the settlement if he wanted to have any credibility at all.
He did three days later, fueling the media uproar, but eventually signed off on the $1.5 million settlement with Pierce plus legal fees that took the total cost back to nearly $3 million.
Because City Hall sways in the political winds without integrity, Fire Department brass were pressured to take disciplinary action when the cover-up unraveled after the Pierce lawsuit came to light.
Arevalo got a six-day suspension, Burton 30 days and Tohill 25 days. The captains also were fined $10,000 each. They sued, claiming they were discriminated against on the basis of race and won every appeal, including two to the state Supreme Court.
They offered to settle for $250,000 each but the city, represented by private lawyers because the City Attorney’s office is inherently conflicted when city employees sue, turned them down.
And so it came before the City Council on Wednesday to approve paying Burton $592,000 and Tohill, the senior caption, $1.052 million.
No discussion. No transparency. No accountability. No shame.
Woof!
Where do we sign up to be paid $1 million to eat three bites of dog food, in a nice pasta?
Why was it such a big deal when a black man was paid, and business as usual when whites are paid out huge sums. City Hall is rife with racism.
The lottery society, all at the expense of the taxpayers.
1:23 PM get over it, throw away that chip on the shoulder.
WOW. You are ****ing me.
Excellent catch, Ron.
This is another chapter in the legacy that Rocky Delgadillo left, and every chapter was a costly one to the city.
The private attorneys showed that they excelled in one area- finding billable hours to rack up. Prevailing in any way on the matter was optional, it seems.
The fight was misplaced. Tenney’s case should have been tried before a jury. I completely disagree with the idea of racial discrimination happening here but the city council bends over backwards to be so sensitive to even the slightest connection made to race and ethnicity.
And as Casey Stengel was reported to say after another loss as he managed the Mets in their early and worst season, “Can’t anybody play this here game?” (the original version of the Stengel quote).
This is the (costly) comedy of errors that passes for city management.
Go Clean Sweep.
4:08, BS to your comment “I completely disagree with the idea of racial discrimination happening here but the city council bends over backwards to be so sensitive to even the slightest connection made to race and ethnicity”. Don’t know if you work for the city of LA. If not, do come down and acquaint yourself with a city dominated by whites, especially in all the management positions. You will find the minorities, mostly cleaning the toilets & picking your garbage.
In reply to anonymous at 4:08 pm-you are attributing more to my comment than was stated. The discussion was addressing the Tenney case, the firefighter that was himself a partiicipant in fire station horseplay. Suddenly it’s a racial matter where he was “one of the guys” for so long? Where he was mixing in with activities until this one incident and now it’s all about race?
I don’t work for the city and as a Latino, I don’t think I missed a lot of who is working there. You might notice that the Filipino dedication last week included a remark that there were something like 3,000 Filipino city workers now.
My point on the sensitivity issues was pretty plain- and this is what the city council does over and over- it highlights diversity, ad nauseum, so that you really are completely aware of racial distinctions instead of creating any condition conducive to harmony.
Your comments appear to support the “white” domination as a perceptioin that overrides what I was commenting on and that’s what I mean about the effect of continually highlighting what is DIFFERENT about people, no matter how much Eric Garcetti says that “we in the city are a family.”
Council members would rather cave in than fight; maybe they are some guilt trip and see this a a perverse form of reparations, so they do their part at the expense to the taxpayers and in disregard of the fact in this case, one of many that they fumble through.
In reply to anonymous at 4:08 pm-you are attributing more to my comment than was stated. The discussion was addressing the Tenney case, the firefighter that was himself a partiicipant in fire station horseplay. Suddenly it’s a racial matter where he was “one of the guys” for so long? Where he was mixing in with activities until this one incident and now it’s all about race?
I don’t work for the city and as a Latino, I don’t think I missed a lot of who is working there. You might notice that the Filipino dedication last week included a remark that there were something like 3,000 Filipino city workers now.
My point on the sensitivity issues was pretty plain- and this is what the city council does over and over- it highlights diversity, ad nauseum, so that you really are completely aware of racial distinctions instead of creating any condition conducive to harmony.
Your comments appear to support the “white” domination as a perceptioin that overrides what I was commenting on and that’s what I mean about the effect of continually highlighting what is DIFFERENT about people, no matter how much Eric Garcetti says that “we in the city are a family.”
Council members would rather cave in than fight; maybe they are on some guilt trip and see this as a perverse form of reparations, so they do their part at the expense to the taxpayers and in disregard of the fact in this case, one of many that they fumble through.
reply to anonymous at 4:08 pm…most city managers white??? ur a dip shit. do you work for the city?
If LA really wanted to end this behavior, it would make the fire fighters and their union responsible for paying the settlements rather than the taxpayers.
You did not report that the City Council voted to a payout of $2,530,000 to Burton and Tohill…The taxpayers now have to ante up for the interest due on the original jury award that the city did not pay Burton and Tohill when the City decided to go ahead and appeal the jury award… the interest and attorney fees kept mounting while the City filed their failed appeal attempt, and their failed attempt to have the CA Supreme Court review the case. Also, the City paid at least $275,000.00 in outside attorney costs.
For sources, see: http://www.firecareers.com/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=11&Topic=9985
The total judgment the council members voted to pay out on this case is $2,530,000.00. Click on page 3:
http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2008/08-0529-S2_ca_06-16-10.pdf
It cost the City (that is, the taxpayers) hundreds of thousands of dollars MORE in interest and attorneys fees when the City Attorney appealed the jury verdict and award, and then lost on appeal. The same thing occurred in the Captain Frank Lima case. You’d think the LAFD and City Attorney would learn from their past mistakes.