Feb. 22--Six former commanders and two firefighters at a San Francisco fire station who were reassigned amid a sexual harassment investigation in 2016 sued the city Wednesday, saying they were discriminated against because the alleged harassment victim was having an affair with a battalion chief.
Firefighters at Station 2 on Powell Street in Chinatown were accused of waging a three-month campaign of sexual harassment against a female co-worker starting in late 2015, in which they allegedly taunted her, urinated in her bed and smeared feces in her bathroom.
Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White later ordered the transfer of all command officers from the station, citing "egregious harassing and retaliatory behavior" by firefighters at Station 2 that created a "hostile work environment based on gender," according to a confidential document obtained by The Chronicle.
Six of those commanders -- Battalion Chief Samson Lai, Deputy Chief Raymond Guzman, Capt. John Rocco, Lts. David Thompson, Michael Thompson and Luis Ibarra-Rivera -- along with firefighters Richard Miles and Daniel Molloy said in their lawsuit that the reassignments amounted to retaliation and discrimination based on their gender. All eight plaintiffs are men.
"We have not been served with the lawsuit yet, and we can't comment on something we have not seen," said John Coté, a spokesman for the city attorney's office.
The plaintiffs claim that the female firefighter who was allegedly harassed was in a relationship with Sam Romero, one of the station's battalion chiefs, who is also a defendant in the case.
After working a handful of shifts at the Chinatown station, the woman filed a complaint with the city Department of Human Resources "falsely accusing Station 2 firefighters of harassing her based on her gender," Burlingame attorney Raven Sarnoff wrote in the lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court.
"In fact, it was plaintiffs who received differential treatment based on gender due to Romero and (the woman's) affair," Sarnoff wrote. "Firefighters observed that (the woman) did not sleep in her own bed in the dorm at the firehouse, and observations made all the more obvious by the fact that (her) alarm clock would go off in the mornings, sometimes for as long as 45 minutes, with no one in her bed to turn it off."
Guzman, one of the plaintiffs, saw the female firefighter running from Romero's room during one early-morning fire call, the suit says. Guzman filed a report with the Fire Department about the incident, the suit says.
The plaintiffs claim that the two often called in sick at the same time or switched shifts so they could be on duty simultaneously.
The "widespread sexual favoritism created a hostile and abusive work environment for the male firefighters who worked at Station 2," the suit says. "Romero was fiercely protective of (the woman), and aggressively retaliated against anyone who he and/or (she) perceived as having slighted her."
Several of the plaintiffs said they told officials with the Fire Department's human resources officials about the alleged affair around the time they were being investigated over the harassment complaint.
In August 2016, the entire command staff at Station 2 was transferred and told they could not return to the station for three years.
In February 2017, Daly City police arrested Romero at a bar after he allegedly slapped the woman across the face, officials said. Romero was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence and pleaded not guilty.
Efforts to reach Romero and the woman were not immediately successful.
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