$5-Million Bias Suit Targets Fire Department
Two Latino employees of the Los Angeles Fire Department sued the agency Tuesday for $5 million, alleging racial discrimination, assault, harassment and retaliation from department personnel.
Donald Smith, an 18-year veteran, is a fire inspector with the brush-clearing unit. He and Dora Avendano, a clerk typist, say they have been subjected to three years of “blatant discrimination.”
Smith, 39, of Pasadena, is regional director of the California Hispanic Firefighters Assn. Avendano, 43, of Sunland, has been employed with the department for three years.
A spokesman at the department’s public information office declined to comment, saying that he has not seen the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Smith alleges that his captain threatened to “throw him through a window” on several occasions for questioning an order. Avendano says that department workers went “out of their way to create a hostile work environment.”
In addition to the department, the complaint names Capt. Greg Stone, Inspector Michael Theule, Capt. Paul Quagliata of the brush-clearing unit, bureau Cmdr. Thomas E. McMaster and Jesus Pasos, a captain in the environmental unit of the fire prevention bureau, as defendants.
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