A former San Francisco firefighter and a marine engineer have sued the city, claiming they were subjected to racial discrimination, harassment and retaliation while working for the Fire Department.
David Hawkins, who resigned in June after more than 20 years with the Fire Department, and Lawrence Thomas, an engineer working on the department’s fleet of fireboats, claim they were passed over for assignments in favor of white colleagues with comparable or less experience and blocked from performing their duties. Hawkins and Thomas are Black.
Hawkins started working on a fireboat at Station 35 in 2009, making him only the second Black person to work a permanent assignment on a fireboat in a century, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in San Francisco Superior Court.
The complaint describes a number of tense confrontations between Hawkins and other Fire Department employees over several years, including one in 2011, when Hawkins claims a white lieutenant assigned work that came with extra pay to a “non-African American firefighter” with less seniority.
When Hawkins complained about being passed over for the job, the lieutenant and three other Fire Department officials allegedly “confined Hawkins to a small, dimly lit room where they cursed, yelled and berated Hawkins over an extended period of time.” Hawkins was later compensated after complaining about the incident, according to the lawsuit.
Hawkins resigned after he returned to his office last month to find it allegedly vandalized, with all of his possessions tossed in the garbage can. At the time, he was working as a high-rise building inspector in the Financial District.
“He was forced to resign as a result of unremitting hostility that created an offensive, hostile and intolerable work environment,” the complaint said.
Hawkins also claims he faced retaliation after advocating for Thomas to be hired as a marine engineer for the fireboats. The two met at a party in late 2013, according to the complaint, and Thomas applied for the role in April 2014. He allegedly scored poorly on an oral examination administered by a white boat pilot, according to the complaint. He protested the results, and the hiring of an engineer in his stead that didn’t meet other eligibility requirements.
In 2018, Thomas was hired to be a fill-in marine engineer, but claims he was assigned only a tiny number of shifts, a fraction of those worked by his white counterparts. Since Jan. 28, Thomas has allegedly been given eight hours of work per week for training each month, but no actual shifts as an engineer.
Hawkins and Thomas are being represented by former San Francisco supervisor, mayoral candidate and civil rights attorney Angela Alioto. Alioto’s son, Joe Alioto Veronese, previously served on the city’s Fire Commission, the Fire Department’s policymaking body.
Alioto stirred controversy last year after she used a racial epithet multiple times during a meeting of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee where city workers were raising concerns about racial discrimination and pay inequity. Alioto, who later apologized, said she was attempting to underscore the corrosive, traumatic effects the word has in the workplace and urged the city workers to press their cases in court.
“We’ll review the lawsuit once we’ve been served with it, and we’ll address it in court,” said John Coté, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office.
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