Residents Raise a Stink Over Plans to Can the Trash Man

Small children trust him.

Dogs wag their tails when he passes.

Retirees spoil him with sweets.

Others believe that he was blessed by God with an aura of warmth and wisdom that transcends the simple to the sublime.

Nonetheless, Freddie Beverly, the beloved neighborhood trash man for a section of Los Angeles just north of Inglewood, is about to lose his job.

A city sanitation worker since 1968, Beverly has been notified that he faces dismissal for an accumulation of “deficiency notices.” Those deficiencies vary from not wearing safety glasses and not wearing seat belts to once tipping over his truck while making a sharp turn. The city’s Bureau of Management Employee Services recommended the termination early this month, and Beverly is thinking of quitting rather than waiting for his dismissal.

The residents of the neighborhood, known to some as East of Ladera, are appalled. They refuse to believe that Beverly, 54, could do anything awful enough to warrant firing. In fact, they wax loquacious about Beverly’s impeccable character, his diligent service to the neighborhood for seven years and his undeniable natural charm.

“We love this guy, and we are the customers here,” said resident Denver Shannon, the leader of an informal group of about 60 residents who have risen to Beverly’s defense. “He is the one tangible evidence of government that works and that we’re happy about. We took Freddie for granted, and we understand that we might lose Freddie, and we are upset about it.

“He has a God-given gift of a warm personality. My daughter gets out of bed when she hears his truck and runs out, and he hugs her. I mean, she is only 3, and I don’t really know why (she responds to him that way). He waved to her one time and that started the whole thing.”

Ask East of Ladera residents about their trash man, and soon you’ll find they echo each other: He always picks up extra trash cans of grass and shrub clippings, he will help frail elderly residents haul their cans out to the street, and he always cleans up wayward refuse. And he always smiles.

But that is only part of it.

“Freddie is sort of unhurried, philosophic and reflective--he is really cool,” said Randy Sweeney, a 63rd Street resident who teaches at Jordan High. “He doesn’t just drive through and pick up trash the way his replacements do. He makes contact, chats, and he knows my kids really well.

“The guy has a sense of ethics. He is a role model for those kids (at Jordan), hard-working and honest. It seems to me, when he is dealing with things so successfully, they ought to be a little more forgiving about those things they consider demerits when you look at the bigger picture. I think it is kind of a cruel thing to do, to take this guy out when he is ready to retire.”

Beverly is scheduled to retire in January. Termination would not affect his retirement benefits, he said, but might make finding another job more difficult.

Shannon, an aerospace engineer, recently tried to attend a closed personnel hearing for Beverly at City Hall, at which he planned to present a petition with signatures protesting Beverly’s firing. But he was not allowed into the meeting, and the 50 signatures he gathered went unnoticed.

But Shannon is pushing ahead. He plans to attend a meeting of the Board of Public Works on Wednesday, at which action will be taken to either fire Beverly or retain him. Although the board will not rehear the case, Shannon will attend to present the signatures.

Why do the neighbors care so much?

“He has not been a normal garbage collector,” said Faz Elahi, president of the South Ladera Neighbors community group. “This guy is so friendly and caring. He’s different from other garbage collectors because of who he is. He is able to deal with people, and like them. People know him as a person, not a garbage man. Garbage is not one of the most glorified things, but he seems to love it. I was told one of the things he was cited for was not wearing his seat belt. How can the guy wear a seat belt and pick up garbage at each house?”

And what does Freddie Beverly think of the grass-roots brouhaha spawned by his pending termination?

“All I do is give good service and treat people that see me 52 times a year the way I’d like to be treated,” he said in an interview as he sat in his Los Angeles living room with his wife, Minnie. “I don’t know why Mr. Denver has taken up my case, but I feel like I am in a poker game where all the cards are stacked against me. I am going to resign before they terminate me so I won’t have a black mark on my record, because I have to get another job. I will still be able to collect my retirement.”

Regardless of the neighbors’ efforts, officials at the Bureau of Management Employee Services insist that, in light of Beverly’s job history, firing is warranted. One official said, “I doubt they would want him to continue to work if they could see his record.”

At least one of Beverly’s customers would be hard to persuade, record or no record. She is 3-year-old Jessica Shannon.

“At Christmas, she wanted to come out and get her picture taken with me giving her a kiss on the jaw,” Beverly recalled. “And she made me a card and wrote on it, ‘To my best friend.’

“All I ever did was wave to her.”