Torrance Prevails in Federal Bias Lawsuit

After three years of litigation at a cost of $3 million, the city of Torrance is poised to win a pitched battle with the U.S. Justice Department over long-standing allegations of racial discrimination in the hiring and employment of police officers and firefighters.

This week, city officials approved a settlement that requires Torrance to slightly modify its police training and workplace practices in exchange for the Justice Department dropping its claim that the Police Department maintained a racially hostile work environment.

The changes are minor compared with the Justice Department’s original demands: ambitious new hiring goals as well as a $4-million fund to compensate those who claimed they had been discriminated against in hiring or did not apply for jobs because they believed their applications would be denied on the basis of race.

The agreement ends the second of three allegations that federal authorities had raised against Torrance.

In June, a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department had “wholly failed” to prove Torrance gave racially biased tests to candidates for police and Fire Department positions.

Still unresolved is an allegation of racially discriminatory background checks by the city. Attorneys for Torrance say that claim also will be dismissed within the month.

“It feels good to get one more phase behind us,” Torrance Mayor Dee Hardison said Wednesday. “And the shame of all of this is that the city spent $3 million to get here, to basically say, ‘We did nothing wrong, we told you we did nothing wrong.’ ”

“I think it is a complete vindication for the city,” added attorney Wayne S. Flick of the law firm of Latham & Watkins, which has represented the city in the litigation. “In my view, it is a nearly complete retreat by the Justice Department.”

While Justice Department attorneys did not return phone calls for comment on the case, the pending settlement ran counter to the department’s string of quick settlements challenging hiring and personnel practices in other Southern California cities.

Pomona, El Monte and Alhambra paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle their cases with the federal government, but Torrance’s willingness to spend far more to fight has so far proved successful. Torrance’s victory, said El Monte City Atty. David F. Gondek, shows that it is possible to prevail against the Justice Department “if you have the resources.”

The agreement reached Tuesday night with the council, and expected to be signed later this week by Justice Department attorneys, calls for the federal agency to drop its claim that Torrance’s Police Department maintains a work environment hostile to African Americans.

In exchange, the city agreed to small changes in its personnel practices. For example, the city said, it would allow a complaint about racial problems in the workplace to be reported to someone with the city other than an employee’s direct supervisor. The city also agreed to make some of its newer policies part of the department’s formal training and practices. Those policies include a daylong orientation on race relations at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

“What they have done is validate the things we have put in place,” said Police Chief Joe De Ladurantey, who under the agreement will make a videotape for all police personnel emphasizing the department’s commitment to equal employment opportunity.

Although the Justice Department’s inquiry began in 1991, its 1993 lawsuit alleged a pattern of discrimination dating to 1981. When it filed the suit, the government said that of the 233 police officers, three (1.2%) were black, 15 (6.4%) were Latino and six (2.5%) were Asian. Of the 160 Fire Department employees, one (0.6%) was black and two (1.2%) were Latino.

By comparison, the U.S. Census figures showed that 22% of Torrance’s residents were Asian American, 10% were Latino and 1.7% were African American.

While maintaining that the city remains committed to a diverse work force, Hardison said the city always had a problem with the Justice Department’s attempt to require Torrance’s numbers to reflect the county’s, not the city’s, population. “Our goal was then--and still is--that we want our police and fire departments to reflect the diversity of the community,” she said. “Color isn’t an issue and the difficulty . . . is that they said we should reflect the diversity of Los Angeles County and we were not that far off from the city” numbers.