Fire Chief Says Sex Bias Probe Was Mishandled

Los Angeles City Fire Chief Donald O. Manning said Monday that his staff mishandled a probe of sexual bias and was wrong in rejecting a captain’s allegations that discriminatory statements were directed toward female recruits.

“Many of the allegations made are justified,” the chief acknowledged during an extraordinary City Hall news conference intended to distance him from the findings of his own investigators.

The chief’s comments came in response to concerns over the accuracy and thoroughness of an investigation into testimony by Capt. Bassanio Peters, who told the City Council that he heard colleagues make derogatory statements about women firefighters in the 1993 Fire Academy class.

Although investigators said several firefighters corroborated Peters’ version, the probe concluded that there was no wrongdoing, only misunderstandings and statements taken out of context.

Manning, who on Monday called the 44-page investigative report a preliminary document, said a review by one of his top assistants concluded that the probe was handled improperly. The chief also announced the formation of a special review board headed by two deputy chiefs to investigate further and report back to him in 30 days.

Manning declined repeatedly to specify how the report was mishandled. However, the chief did acknowledge that, in some instances, women recruits were subjected to unfair treatment at the academy and that department investigators tried to turn their probe against Peters by asking questions about his personal life.

“I support the chief’s efforts to get to the bottom of this,” said Fire Commission President Elizabeth Lowe, who was at Manning’s side during the press conference.

The City Council’s Personnel Committee is conducting its own closed-door inquiry into the matter. The findings of the Fire Department investigation, reported in The Times two weeks ago, outraged members of the council committee, who were puzzled about how there could be no wrongdoing when several firefighters had confirmed Peters’ accusations.

Among other things, the committee is trying to determine whether department investigators altered tape recordings of investigative interviews that were given to the committee. Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, chairwoman of the Personnel Committee, has said the recordings differed substantially from the same interviews as transcribed in the investigative report.

The committee also will attempt to determine what role, if any, Manning played during the department’s probe. At a March 15 committee hearing, the chief told council members that he could not comment specifically on the report because he had not been in contact with the investigation team and had not thoroughly read the probe’s findings.

According to sources, at least six draft copies of the report were reviewed by several of Manning’s top subordinates.

“We will be taking a look at everybody who had a role in this--wherever that takes us,” Goldberg vowed Monday. She said the department’s investigation did not appear to have been conducted “with the rigor that one would hope to find the truth.”

“The worst case scenario, it’s a cover-up,” Goldberg said, “and in the best case it is ineptitude.”

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, also a member of the Personnel Committee, said Monday that he was troubled by inconsistent statements made by Manning during a series of hearings into alleged discrimination on the 3,100-member force. Ridley-Thomas said he has asked Goldberg to place the chief under oath during the closed-door hearings, which began last week and will resume Friday.

“The committee is concerned what Chief Manning did or did not know about the report and whether or not the chief was allowing the report to go forward to test its acceptability with the committee,” Ridley-Thomas said.

Both Ridley-Thomas and Goldberg said Monday that they will ask the council to block Manning’s review of the investigation until the Personnel Committee concludes its own closed-door hearings.

According to sources familiar with the hearings, two firefighters last week testified under oath that the statements of several department employees who corroborated Peters’ accusations were not contained in the investigative report. Firefighters also said they were asked such questions about Peters as whom he dated.

Council members were also told that another department employee was interviewed for about 20 minutes during the probe, but only about five minutes of the questioning was contained in the tape recording of the interview, the sources said.

Manning said Monday that his news conference was not related to the Personnel Committee’s investigation. “It was my decision that we want to set the record straight,” the chief said. “I don’t want the public to lose confidence in its Fire Department.”

The image of the department--long considered one of the nation’s finest--has been badly tarnished since the release of a blistering city audit in November. Among other things, the Personnel Department audit concluded that the Fire Academy was the focal point of problems in a department in which about 40% of all female recruits have washed out over the past seven years--about twice the failure rate of male trainees.

The concerns raised in the audit were heightened by Peters, who testified before the Personnel Committee in December that he had heard members of the training staff in 1993 express deep disdain for female recruits, saying that they were not tough enough for the grueling task of fighting fires. As a result of Peters’ testimony, Manning ordered the department investigation that he criticized Monday.

For his part, Peters told department investigators that he overheard the chief in charge of the training division and the department’s female sexual harassment counselor remark that women are good only for “consoling (accident) victims” and “females have no business being on the Fire Department,” the report said.

Several firefighters, according to the report, told department investigators that they heard the same or similar statements during the same conversations.