Suit Accuses Fire Officials of Racial Bias : Hiring: Two black women employed as dispatchers seek damages over alleged discrimination and harassment.

Melvina Lay and Michelle Morton knew it wouldn’t be easy to become firefighters and both women steeled themselves for the grueling physical tests that lay ahead.

But they were unprepared for the blatant racial discrimination they say they encountered in the Los Angeles County Fire Department, where both black women took jobs as dispatchers as a steppingstone to firefighter careers.

“Basically, they had two sets of rules--one for the white males in the department and one for us,” said Morton, 34, of Tarzana.

From remarks about bringing watermelon to an office lunch and the supposed cleaning prowess of black women, to a night when their captain donned a white paper bag resembling a Ku Klux Klan hood, Morton and Lay claim in a pending Superior Court lawsuit that they were victims of ongoing discrimination and then harassment when they complained.

Morton and Lay, 32, of North Hollywood, are seeking an unspecified amount of money for back pay, emotional distress and punitive damages, according to their attorney, Lawrence M. Glasner of Woodland Hills. The suit names as defendants the Los Angeles County Fire Department, department personnel director Rick Palardy, Battalion Chief David Baisley, and Capts. Michael Lee, Greg Bates, William Blackburn, Doug Ashby and Furmin Lopez.

Kevin Brazile, a senior deputy attorney for the county, said the department has denied the allegations but he declined to discuss details. A department spokeswoman, Pat Vaughan, said fire officials were confident they had taken appropriate action after the principal incidents described in the suit. She declined further comment.

One key incident outlined in Morton and Lay’s suit involved their detention on the night of Nov. 6, 1990, when they were held as theft suspects at the County Fire Department complex where they worked. They were denied the chance to make phone calls or use the restroom unescorted and were subjected to body searches by a sheriff’s deputy who was allegedly looking for stolen computer equipment.

Their detention, overseen by Baisley, occurred the night after their immediate superior, Lee, cut eyeholes in a white paper bag and put it over his head, the suit says. Morton and Lay claim they were being harassed and intimidated because they were preparing a formal complaint against Lee.

The Nov. 5, 1990, bag incident touched a nerve in the department, which for years has been accused by black employees of biased promotional practices.

Nearly a third of the county’s black firefighters quit their union in protest after Local 1014 of the International Assn. of Fire Fighters passed a resolution declaring its total support of Lee “in his struggle with the department.”

Lee, who could not be reached for comment, received a written reprimand for conduct unbecoming a fire captain. A department investigation accepted his defense that he had been mimicking not the KKK but the “Unknown Comic,” an entertainer whose act involves wearing a paper bag over his head.

The department concluded Lee’s gesture had not been racially motivated, to the disappointment of the Black Employees Assn.

“We wanted him terminated,” said William Ruffin, the group’s vice president and labor relations director. The association represents 5,000 blacks in metropolitan Los Angeles who work in public and private industry.

Of the County Fire Department’s 2,282 firefighters, 12 are women, including three blacks, according to Vaughan. The total number of black firefighters is 193, she said. Fourteen of the department’s 81 civilian dispatchers--the post held by Morton and Lay--are black, including 10 women and three men.

Officials of the Stentorians, a black firefighters’ association, said Morton’s and Lay’s case is only the latest among dozens of discrimination claims that have been filed against the County Fire Department over the last two decades. Herschel Clady, a black battalion chief for the county, had to sue the department to win each of his three promotions, they said.

“I’ve been here 14 years and there have been at least 20 to 25 lawsuits--those are the ones that went to some type of litigation. There have been so many internally, it’s been ridiculous,” said County Fire Capt. James Dixon, a Stentorian member.

Capt. Ollie Linson, president of the Stentorians/Los Angeles County Black Firefighters, said the striking thing about Morton’s and Lay’s case was the flagrant action of Lee donning a white mask. But Linson said work conditions have been improving in the last three years and he credited the arrival of P. Michael Freeman, the department’s new chief.

Ruffin said the history of the department has shown that “when a black firefighter is involved in any kind of situation, he or she is treated more harshly than their white counterpart.”

During an interview in their attorney’s office, Morton and Lay said that was precisely their experience during their tenures as dispatchers. Both joined the department in February, 1990. Lay never returned after her Nov. 6, 1990, detention and went on to become a Ventura County firefighter.

Morton remained. She said, “I didn’t feel their prejudice was something that should keep me off the job.” But she says she has been ostracized, prevented from performing her duties and subjected to unfair scrutiny. She recently received notice that she would be terminated, her attorney said. He said she had received a poor evaluation.

Morton and Lay said they took jobs as dispatchers only after failing a round of rigorous physical tests for firefighter. Both women, who met in training at the Foothill Fire Academy, still hoped to eventually become firefighters and viewed the civilian post as a form of entry into the department.

A onetime engineering major at Princeton University, Morton recalled an occasion about a week before the bag incident in which her immediate supervisor relayed a message from Lee that he wanted her to wash the walls of the complex’s kitchen and lunchroom “and if I didn’t like it I could take sick leave.”

Morton said Lee had once told a dispatcher of Filipino extraction as she cleaned up after herself in the lunchroom: “ ‘You do that quite well. You must have some black in you.’ ”

A week after the bag incident and her detention, Morton said she was refused the right to sleep in department bunk beds, which she said were used by dispatchers as well as firefighters when the need arose. She said she was never given a reason other than “it would be inappropriate for me to sleep over.”

Lay, a 1985 graduate of Cal State Los Angeles, cited several remarks by Lee with racial overtones, including a time when their shift was planning an office “picnic” for those who would be working on the Fourth of July.

“ ‘I know Melvina is going to bring the watermelon,’ ” Lay recalled Lee saying in what she described as an Amos ‘n’ Andy voice.

On the night Lee donned the white paper bag, he punched holes for eyes and tilted it so that a corner pointed straight up, Lay said. It was a white dispatcher who noticed him first and remarked, “Oh, it’s the KKK,” Lay said.

“I just glared at him,” Lay recalled. “To a black person, that’s not funny.”

The following night, she and Morton were detained as they tried to meet upstairs to exchange a petition condemning Lee’s gesture. The Fire Department later claimed they were discovered leaving an “off-limits office” at a time when officials were concerned about stolen computer equipment. Morton and Lay say they met in an office used as a break room that was open to all dispatchers.

The department later acknowledged that the dispatchers had been improperly detained, but said its investigation found no evidence that the measure was racially motivated. Baisley, who supervised the detention, received a written reprimand.