Tale of Intrigue Surfaces in Job Demotion Case

A Hawthorne firefighter who claims that he was demoted in retaliation for political activities told the city’s Civil Service Commission a tale of intrigue that involved his secretly passing Fire Department information to Councilwoman Ginny M. Lambert.

The testimony came at a recent Civil Service hearing. Dennis Patriquin, a firefighter for 16 years, has charged that he was demoted from probationary engineer to firefighter because he gave Lambert potentially embarrassing information, including data from documents about overtime pay and departmental expenditures.

Lambert wanted the information to help persuade the City Council to authorize a study of whether the county could provide fire services more cheaply than the city Fire Department, according to testimony from Patriquin and Lambert.

Last year Patriquin filed a suit in Torrance Superior Court against the city and top Fire Department officials, including Chief Roger Milstead, alleging that he was demoted for his political activities.

A court commissioner said the suit did not belong in court because Patriquin had not exhausted efforts to resolve the matter through the Civil Service Commission.

Patriquin’s attorney, Robert H. Swensen, is asking that Patriquin be reinstated as an engineer and awarded an unspecified amount of back pay. He said last week that the firefighter was demoted for exercising his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

The city says he failed a one-year probationary period as an engineer because he was emotionally unsuited for the job and had a disruptive personality.

During questioning by Richard Terzian, an attorney representing the city, Patriquin acknowledged that briefly in the fall of 1987 he was suicidal.

In an interview later, Swensen said Patriquin was upset because of overwhelming pressure and harassment from his superiors, who did not want the county taking over the city’s fire services.

Swenson said the city’s demotion of Patriquin under those circumstances is similar to “shoot(ing) someone and then claim(ing) that the person can’t do the job because he is injured.”

During the proceedings, Lambert testified that she sought the information from Patriquin because she thought the city could save money by having the county provide fire services. She said she went to Patriquin because she believed that then-Chief Ralph Hardin was reluctant to provide information that could have led to the dismantling of the Fire Department.

At the time, there was a citywide debate about the most cost-effective way to provide fire and paramedic services. The council voted 3 to 2 in December, 1988, against conducting the study.

During questioning from Terzian, Patriquin said he gave Lambert the information because he also believed that the city could save money by having the county run fire services in Hawthorne. But he said his superior officers opposed the idea, so he passed the information to Lambert secretly.

One of his clandestine transfers ended on an embarrassing note, according to testimony from Tom Worldy, a longtime friend of Patriquin.

Worldy said he got his arm stuck in the mail slot at Lambert’s house when he tried to deliver a package of information from Patriquin, who was hiding in Worldy’s.