Black Firefighters Tell of Battling Bias on L.A. Force : Personnel: Several who were fired or quit have succeeded elsewhere. The department defends its record.

Nearly 17 years have passed since Calvin Wells was booted out of the Los Angeles City Fire Department, but the pain still remains.

Now a battalion chief with the Pasadena Fire Department, he contends that he was targeted by training supervisors who have weeded out a disproportionate number of black recruits over the years.

“It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth,” said Wells, 35, who was raised in South-Central Los Angeles and still lives in the city. “I think about it every time a Los Angeles firetruck rolls by.”

Wells is one of a number of black Fire Department recruits who were fired but later launched successful careers in other fire departments. From his class alone, the fired rookies include another battalion chief and an engineer with the Los Angeles County Fire Department and a firefighter with the Long Beach Fire Department. Another African American rookie in that class was later rehired by the Los Angeles City Fire Department and is now a captain.

“There is racism and sexism in the Fire Department,” said Capt. Roy Harvey, 35, who contends that he has weathered much racial abuse during his 16 years on the force. “I’m saying absolutely that it does happen and has happened. And the people who say they haven’t seen it have been closing their eyes.”

Long regarded as one of the finest forces in the nation, the 3,100-member city department has recently come under increasing scrutiny for its hiring and promotion practices. A harshly critical city audit released last month concluded that white men dominate top posts and that women and minorities have been harassed and given unfair evaluations by supervisors, all in an effort to run them off the force.

In the past decade, according to department data, 34% of all black recruits in the city Fire Department have either quit or been fired during their first year--a rate twice as high as that of white firefighters.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who has studied sexual harassment and racial discrimination in the city’s work force, has vowed to fully examine the Fire Department and has scheduled two hearings this month that are certain to generate even more heat on the department and its chief, Donald O. Manning.

Summoned before Goldberg’s Personnel Committee last month, Manning praised the department’s minority hiring record, saying significant strides have been made during his tenure. He dismissed the audit findings as the grumblings of anonymous firefighters and a few embittered former employees. The chief was supported by a roomful of firefighters, some of whom testified that they had neither seen nor heard of harassment or discrimination in the department.

Battalion Chief Roger Gillis reiterated that position Thursday, calling such allegations “absolutely, unequivocally false.”

“We have done everything possible,” he said, “to make it an equal and fair program for everybody of all ethnicities.”

But in interviews with The Times, black firefighters have painted a far different picture of life inside firehouses across the city, alleging that officials at all levels in the department have allowed discrimination to flourish. To hammer home that point, the 225-member Los Angeles Stentorians, an advocacy organization for the city’s black firefighters, has planned a news conference for today to detail alleged racism in the ranks and to offer their praise for the controversial city audit.

Among the black firefighters who were included in the Fire Department’s high washout statistics was Charles Hopkins, 41, now a firefighter with the Long Beach Fire Department.

A native of Los Angeles who grew up in the shadow of the Coliseum, Hopkins entered the academy after a four-year stint in the Navy. After his graduation, he was assigned to the field.

Hopkins, who was the only African American on his shift, said he was ordered to accomplish tasks not required of a white rookie who had worked at the station. He said he was forced to arrive each day at 5 a.m. so he could finish a list of chores before reporting for duty at 7 a.m. Among other things, he said, he was ordered to make coffee for the 22 people in the firehouse and fill empty breathing apparatus bottles.

Hopkins said he then laid out his protective clothing and that of the station’s three captains and the battalion chief and his driver. Hopkins’ next task was to check the oil, lights and batteries of the station’s eight vehicles and to wash dirty dishes, make new pots of coffee and answer the telephones.

“Kind of slow, aren’t you boot? You better get with it!” Hopkins says he was constantly told by the other firefighters, who taunted him by saying that he could not fill the shoes of a white rookie who had recently transferred to another station. “That’s the psychological game they play in the station,” Hopkins said.

After the morning chores and between fire calls, Hopkins said he was drilled by a captain who would probe for his weaknesses, criticize him and write him up for making mistakes.

“You’re having so much trouble. Why don’t you just quit?” Hopkins quoted his captain as saying while he flipped the pages of his note pad documenting the errors.

“They beat you down until you’re so dazed and pile things on you,” Hopkins said. “Once you get confused, it just keeps snowballing.”

Finally, two weeks before the end of his probationary period, Hopkins said he and three other black rookies were terminated.

Hopkins said they tried to protest but were told: “The evaluations speak for themselves.”

Black firefighters interviewed by The Times said that one way the department discriminates against minorities is through the subjectivity built into the training and evaluation process--a criticism echoed in the recent city audit.

As one example, the 300-page audit cited a 1992 academy test on tool maintenance, in which points were deducted for writing “lightly sand” instead of “sand lightly” and “steel wool or emery cloth” instead of “emery cloth or steel wool.”

This kind of subjectivity, according to some black firefighters, has allowed training instructors and captains to flunk black rookies at high rates.

“It would be one thing if it is tangible, but to be washed out on trumped-up charges, it hurts,” said Wells, the Pasadena battalion chief.

Wells was 18 and fresh out of Los Angeles High School when he went through the city training academy. He said he was fired for having trouble lifting heavy ladders--one week after the training segment on ladder operations had concluded.

“They said it looked like I was having problems,” Wells recalled. “Being young and naive, and not wanting to destroy my chances for rehire, I didn’t raise a stink and told them I would be back.”

Eleven months after he was fired, Wells was hired by Pasadena. Taking the Pasadena entry examination with him were five other blacks who were let go from the same Los Angeles academy.

Reflecting on their experiences, the men said they had no doubt that they could have done the jobs on the city department had they been given a fair shot.

Said Wells: “The only regret I have is that I got off to a rocky start and was denied fair and equitable treatment.”

The controversy over the dismissal and treatment of minorities in the department has sparked internal friction and heightened racial tensions. Many non-black firefighters believe that the problem is not one of racism but of a lowering of standards, resulting in a higher washout rate among unqualified recruits.

Representative of that faction is Capt. John Squire, a former training officer and 30-year veteran of the department.

“In the zeal to hire black firefighters,” he said, “the Personnel Department has abdicated any standard that has ever existed.” Squire stressed that he feels that the vast majority of minorities who pass probation can do the job, but that he is opposed to any racial quotas.

The Fire Department was integrated in 1955 after a bitter, year-long struggle in which then-Chief John H. Alderson was fired for blocking efforts to remove black firefighters from segregated stations.

Since 1974, the department has operated under a federal consent decree established to settle a discrimination lawsuit. The decree requires that the department retain at least 50% minorities among the recruits that it hires annually.

Manning has said the department has exceeded the requirements of the consent decree by hiring 57% minorities. But the department did not provide an annual breakdown requested by The Times showing what percentage of those minorities were retained, as required by the decree.

The number of blacks on the force has increased from 2% in 1974 to the current 11%, which nearly mirrors their citywide population percentage of 13%. Based on current promotion trends, the chief noted, blacks will reach parity in the captain and battalion chief ranks by the year 2000.

Today, whites constitute 62% of the department’s uniformed members, Latinos 23% and Asians 4%. Women make up 3% of the force.

But despite these gains at the entry level, there has actually been a decrease in minority representation at the department’s highest levels.

Of the top 20 top department officials and administrators, 95% are white men, and there are no Asian Americans, women or blacks, the Personnel Department audit found. In 1990, according to the audit, white men held 89% of the chief, deputy chief and assistant chief slots.

Because of the alleged discrimination at fire stations, many black firefighters say the only place where they could find refuge was in the Fire Prevention Bureau, which is responsible for building inspections. Its officers work 40 hours a week and do not live at station houses where the abuses allegedly occurred.

Department records show that, in the past 10 years, the percentage of blacks in fire prevention has swelled from 17% to 41%.

“You’re respected for your knowledge,” said one black fire inspector, “and it’s a more professional environment.”

Under Fire: Times on Demand has assembled a package of four stories on the continuing bias controversy in the Los Angeles Fire Department. To order, call 808-8463. Press *8630, select option 1 and order No. 5512. $4.

Details on Times electronic services, B4