Chief Didn’t Sound Intoxicated, 2 Testify : Hearing: Statements contradict other fire employees about call from D’Wayne Scott on night L.A. riots broke out.

Fire Chief D’Wayne Scott did not sound intoxicated when he phoned in orders that his firefighters were not to go to Los Angeles the night riots broke out, a dispatch operator and her supervisor testified Saturday at a civil service hearing.

Their statements contradicted those of fire employees who have testified that Scott slurred his words and sounded intoxicated when they talked to him on the phone that night.

City officials, questioning Scott’s judgment in making that decision April 29, asked the chief soon after to take a psychological test to determine if alcohol abuse was affecting his job performance as some subordinates have complained.

Scott, 51, refused to take the test and was placed on administrative leave May 27. He was suspended July 30 when he did not withdraw his objections to the psychological evaluation.

Dispatcher Mary Lou Perez and her supervisor, Steve Rothert, are two of more than 20 witnesses being subpoenaed to testify before the city’s Personnel Commission, which will recommend whether the City Council should allow Scott to return to work.

The public hearing began Aug. 12.

Perez and Rothert, though employees of the Huntington Beach Fire Department, work in the central dispatch office that serves several cities including Huntington Beach and Westminster.

Perez testified that Scott phoned the dispatch office about 8:30 p.m. April 29. She referred him to Rothert, who then duly noted his order. Twenty minutes later, a battalion chief from Westminster called Rothert to ask if he thought Scott was intoxicated when he gave his order.

“I told him I didn’t feel that he was,” Rothert said under questioning by Scott’s attorney, Richard J. Silber.

Silber also asked Perez if the fire chief had slurred his words or sounded inebriated on the phone and she responded, “No.”

Paul Gilbrook, president of the Westminster Firefighters Assn., testified on the first day of the hearing that the fire chief had telephoned him April 29, demanding to know who had complained to city officials about his decision to keep city firefighters away from the fast-spreading civil unrest.

Gilbrook testified that Scott used a racial epithet in that conversation and sounded drunk because he slurred his words.

The fire chief has said he refused to send firefighters to Los Angeles because there was not enough police protection for them. He has denied making the racial slur or being drunk when making the decision.