Firefighter Alleges Discrimination : ‘Rose Caper’ Ends in Suit Against County Department

It was only a single rose taken from the desk of a friend on Valentine’s Day.

But Los Angeles County firefighter William L. Mayfield is convinced that the events that followed reveal that he is a victim of discrimination whose chances of promotion were deliberately hurt by his bosses because he is black.

Mayfield, a 10-year veteran, charges in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court that his superiors took a “trivial incident” and blew it out of proportion to discredit him while he was being considered for promotion to captain.

His suit, which names Los Angeles County, the county Fire Department and Fire Chief John Englund, contends that blacks who seek promotion are singled out for disciplinary actions while non-blacks are not.

He claims that the Fire Department uses a system of “subjective and discretionary criteria” to deny promotion of qualified blacks to fire captain. The suit also charges that black firefighters are grouped in “low-level bands” on departmental hiring lists, while white firefighters are grouped in “high-level bands.”

And it accuses the Fire Department of promoting blacks at a slower rate than whites and giving white firefighters better, higher-paying jobs.

Claims Rights Violated

Mayfield, 40, is asking a federal judge to rule that his civil and constitutional rights have been violated and to order his promotion to captain, with appropriate compensatory damages.

The suit, filed last week by attorney Laurence B. Labovitz, was the second time recently that the county Fire Department has been charged in a legal setting with racial bias. The Los Angeles County Civil Service Commission on June 10 ordered the promotion of veteran black Fire Capt. Hershel Clady, ruling that he had been a victim of racial discrimination in an “inherently discriminatory” promotional system.

While offering no comment on specific allegations in Mayfield’s suit, Battalion Chief Gordon Pearson, a department spokesman, denied that the Fire Department discriminates against minority firefighters seeking promotion or that Mayfield’s chances of making captain were damaged by what some have called the “Rose Caper.”

The events that turned the flower incident into a federal case began on Feb. 13, 1986, records show, when Capt. Darrell Higuchi presented Amelia Mawson, a secretary in the data management office, a Valentine’s bouquet of 13 red roses. She put them in a vase and placed them on her desk.

When she returned from lunch the next day, she found that there were only 12 roses; one was missing. She reported later that she had been upset that someone would take a rose without permission, but said she did not want “to make a big deal out of it.”

Later that day, according to her statement, Mayfield told her that he had taken the rose and had given it to “the ugliest woman in the building.” At first she didn’t believe him, she said, but when he returned to her office a second time and told her that he had given the flower to “a less fortunate person,” she accepted his statement.

“I told him that it was all right, and that he was forgiven,” she said.

But it soon became clear that it was not all right with Capt. Higuchi, who learned about the missing rose later that day. Two days later, he came to the dispatch center at Fire Department headquarters where Mayfield worked as a dispatcher and requested that the Rose incident be made part of the department’s official record.

By the next day, Higuchi said he had changed his mind and decided not to pursue the matter. “All parties involved have expressed that this whole matter be dropped with regard to the missing rose,” Capt. Michael Singer, Mayfield’s supervisor, reported.

But Singer said he was “not content” with the “obvious discrepancies” in the facts. Mayfield had made three varying statements about why he had taken the rose and to whom he had given it and refused to identify the person who received it, he said.

In his written explanation, Mayfield said that he took the rose and gave it to a co-worker who had had a death in the family. He said Amelia was not at her desk to ask her for the flower, so he returned later to tell her about it. He contended the the affair was “a matter between friends” that had been misconstrued by an uninvolved observer.

To make amends, Mayfield said he brought her a dozen roses to replace the one he took.

Letter of Reprimand

But he was to learn a few days later that his explanation had not satisfied the brass. He received a letter of reprimand.

“You took an item of minor value from another employee that had been given to her as a gift, without permission, and gave said item to another unknown employee,” the letter declared. “ . . . Taking the property of another person, regardless of value, is in fact theft.” Mayfield was also reprimanded for supposedly committing perjury.

He refused to sign the letter, declaring in a written response that an inadequate investigation had resulted in defining “an act between friends as one of theft.”

He also raised the question of racial bias.

“This incident would not have reached this magnitude had I not been a black eligible candidate for promotion to fire captain,” Mayfield said in a Fire Department document. “Therefore, I have been victimized by discrimination based on race.”

During the next several months, Mayfield appealed his reprimand to successive higher levels of the chain of command, where his claims of discrimination were soundly rejected. But he nevertheless succeeded last August in getting the damaging letter removed from his file.

Soon after the rose incident, he left his position as a dispatcher to patrol high-risk fire areas in Hacienda Heights. But, according to Mayfield, his change in assignment has not really changed anything for him, except the kind of work he does.

“I still feel that they hold it against me, and they will hold it against me. Why did they push it like they did? They just wanted to come after me,” he said.

Speaking for the Fire Department, however, Assistant Fire Chief David Hanson, who handles personnel matters, said that when Mayfield made a charge of racial discrimination, his claim was turned over to the county’s affirmative-action compliance office for investigation.

Results of that investigation were reported to the county Civil Service Commission last July, according to Hanson, when the affirmative-action office said, “Our investigation concludes that the appellant was not in fact discriminated against.” The Civil Service Commission subsequently rejected Mayfield’s appeal.

Also, Hanson said, the affirmative-action investigation report concluded that a revised score of 76 that Mayfield had received in an evaluation of his promotability to fire captain “was measured by appropriate standards.”

“To give me 76 with the background I have, something is definitely wrong. . . . I can name several guys on this captain’s list who got higher APs (ratings) than I, although I have done more, moved around more and had more experience,” Mayfield said.

His attorney, Labovitz, charged that Assistant Chief John Cummings, one of the chiefs who heard Mayfield’s appeal for a higher score in the promotion process and increased his rating by two points, had also been involved in the rose incident when Mayfield fought for removal of the letter of reprimand from his file.

“The whole process was tainted,” Labovitz said. “Mayfield should have been judged by the AP process that was free of any hint of bias.”