Dog Food Prank Burns LA Fire Chief

The city's fire chief announced his retirement Friday amid a furor over a black firefighter's claim that he suffered racial discrimination when his spaghetti was spiked with dog food.

Chief William Bamattre, whose predecessor also left abruptly a decade ago during a similar racially charged crisis, told Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in a letter that he will step down Jan. 1.

In a statement from his office, the chief did not directly address the controversy but said he was "very proud of the dedication, courage and extraordinary commitment and efforts of our firefighters."

The departure of Bamattre, who led the Los Angeles Fire Department for more than a decade, makes the chief the highest-level casualty of the lawsuit.

Bamattre "became a liability for the department and the city," one official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, told the LA Times. "The situation became unsustainable."

The City Council voted 11-1 earlier this month to award Tennie Pierce $2.7 million to settle his racial discrimination lawsuit.

The emotional debate over the incident has put the spotlight on a larger issue that often goes unmentioned: the hazing rituals that are part of a macho culture that is the firefighter's world.

Almost immediately, photos surfaced on the Internet of Pierce engaging in other firehouse pranks. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa took notice and vetoed the award.

On Wednesday, the City Council sustained the mayor's veto, voting 9-6 against a motion to override.

"It's a bad situation. It's a bad prank, but I cannot connect that to racism," Councilman Dennis Zine said.

The council decision sends the lawsuit to court on March 19, although the city attorney could conduct further settlement talks with Pierce.

An after-hours call to Pierce's attorney, Genie Harrison, was not immediately returned.

Critics on the Internet and talk radio shows have accused Pierce, 51, of playing the "race card." The veteran firefighter responded that his 20-year career was destroyed after he broke a code of silence and spoke out against something he believes was racially motivated and crossed the line of typical firehouse fun.

"This is wrong," an emotional Pierce said earlier this week. "If four black firemen did it to a white fireman, I would stand up."

As people took sides, sociologists and other observers said the incident has focused attention on an insular culture that people outside of a firehouse rarely learn much about.

"It's a lot like what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," said anthropologist Jorja Leap, who teaches at UCLA's department of social welfare. "What goes on in the firehouse stays in the firehouse as long the firefighters ride in on their big red trucks and put out the fire."

Occasionally stories do spill out, usually when lawsuits are filed or damages are awarded.

Earlier this year a black firefighter sued the New York Fire Department after he said someone left a hangman's noose on top of his gear. Two years ago the city of Coral Gables, Fla., awarded $10,000 to a woman firefighter who said her male colleagues handcuffed her during a hazing ritual. A firefighter who was accused of causing at least $2,500 damage to lockers and gear in Dunedin, Fla., in 2001 said he was retaliating against co-workers who had filled his hat with spaghetti.

Such pranks have been part of the firefighting culture for as long as he can remember, said Charles L. Bose, a retired firefighter who published the book "Fire House Antics" in 2004.

"It ain't gonna go away. It's just so ingrained," said Bose, who worked for the Sanford (Fla.) Fire Department for 25 years.

The pranks, he said, provide a release for people who consider themselves part of a brotherhood that must deal frequently with danger and tragedy.

"People don't understand what we go through. They have no idea. They just don't," said Bose, who compares the stress and isolation to what U.S. soldiers faced during the Vietnam War.

Most of the pranks he was witness to were harmless, Bose recalled, things like firing a bottle rocket under a bathroom door after someone had gone in and sat down.

But occasionally they rose to a level that could get someone in trouble, and when they did, he said, everyone assumed a code of silence.

Pierce's supporters say that's what happened to him as his complaints to department supervisors were ignored and his family harassed until he was driven out of the department.

His supporters also say the joke played on him crossed the line because of the clearly racial connotations they read into it.

"The stereotype of the African-American has often been one of monkey, dog, animal," said civil rights activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable.

"Dog food fits in with that racist stereotype of African-Americans that far too many people have," Hutchinson continued, adding that only a black firefighter had it placed in his food and only white firefighters took part in the prank.

At Wednesday's City Council meeting, black Councilman Bernard Parks, the city's former police chief, compared it to the time he arrived at a station as the newly appointed captain and found the "n-word" written on every visor of every patrol car.

Critics of the settlement, including Councilman Dennis Zine, said it appeared clear to them Pierce was targeted because, at 6-feet-5, he was known as his fire station's "Big Dog" and had jokingly told teammates to "feed the Big Dog" during volleyball games.

Leap said it is "difficult, if not impossible," to separate pranks from sexism and racism because "pranks tend to focus on the characteristics of different groups."

She also agreed with Bose that it is hard to break through the cultural barriers of a fire department, whose members bond through hazing as they are taught that their lives can depend on putting total trust in one another.

"Is it impossible to eradicate this? she asked. "No. But does it take extremely strong leadership and a commitment to change? Yes. And I'm not sure fire department culture — and I don't just mean Los Angeles Fire Department culture — has a commitment to this kind of change yet."