Westminster Plans to Pay Fired Chief

A former fire chief fired for alleged incompetence and alcohol abuse, who angered city officials by refusing to send firefighters to the Los Angeles riots, would receive $307,000 plus full retirement pay under a settlement before the City Council tonight.

“This seems to be the best course for the city,” City Manager Bill Smith said Monday. “We could have argued and appealed, but that would have meant more attorneys’ fees and more years of consternation.”

D’Wayne Scott, who was a 26-year veteran of the Fire Department and its chief for eight years, was fired in 1993.

His trouble began when he refused to send Westminster firefighters to rioting in Los Angeles in April 1992. He was the only chief in Orange County who would not send assistance on the first night of rioting, a move that upset many city officials and firefighters.

The City Council overturned his order, and Westminster firefighters did battle fires in Los Angeles.

Subsequently, some firefighters said Scott’s judgment in that and other situations had been impaired by alcohol abuse. City officials determined that alcohol and chronic absenteeism were affecting his job performance.

Scott vehemently denied all the allegations and called his firing illegal and arbitrary. He said his decision not to send the firefighters to the riots was based on concern for their safety.

About 10 months later, after a citizens’ panel upheld the firing, Scott filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court.

Judge Francisco F. Firmat ruled in 1995 that the city “had erred in terminating him as we did,” Smith said. After the ruling, both parties entered closed-session negotiations to work out the settlement, officials said.

Firmat “didn’t find wrongful termination but found that we didn’t follow our own rules and procedures,” Smith said. “I disagree with that, but this will finally end it.”

Scott’s attorney, Richard J. Silber, said Monday that he and his client, who is now age 55, could not comment on the case until after the City Council makes its decision today.

Under the agreement, the city would reimburse Scott $234,441 in lost wages and $37,500 in attorney fees, and pay about $35,000 to a retirement fund.

Scott’s record and name will be cleared of all alleged wrongdoing, officials said, and he will receive retirement benefits as if he had retired from the city in May 1995.

After Scott was fired, the city’s relationship with its Fire Department became increasingly strained.

In an unrelated situation in 1994, several other firefighters were fired after an investigation of overtime pay that concluded they had been guilty of payroll fraud. But members of the Westminster Firefighters Union blamed the city for the overtime costs and said city officials were endangering the lives of residents by refusing to hire more firefighters.

The battle escalated into a recall campaign against four council members, who later were retained in a special election.

When the case was heard last September in federal court, the council members were found by a jury to have violated the firefighters’ civil rights and were ordered to pay more than $2 million in damages.

The city has since disbanded its fire department and now contracts with the Orange County Fire Authority.