Oakland Firefighter Loses Racial Bias Suit Against City

Oakland, CA - An Oakland firefighter’s five-year-old lawsuit accusing department supervisors of racial discrimination and harassment was rejected by a jury in federal court last week, the Oakland City Attorney’s Office announced today.

Ronald El-Malik Curtis first filed the lawsuit in 2010, alleging that a pattern of harassment started when he was first assigned to Oakland fire Station 1 at 1605 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, according to court documents.

Curtis had been an Oakland firefighter since 2004 and was transferred to Station 1 in April 2007.

Station 1 had a reputation for only having white firefighters, the suit alleged. When he arrived, Curtis started trying to recruit other black firefighters to the station, according to the complaint. The firefighters Curtis tried to recruit were told by two different supervisors to go back to their own station, according to the complaint.

After that, Curtis was subjected to a campaign of harassment that included hiding his car and house keys from him, putting pond water in the syrup used by firefighters on Curtis’s shift and hiding a dead pigeon under his bed that led to him waking up covered in ants, according to the complaint.

Curtis reported the harassment to his supervisors but nothing was done about it, he alleged.

He claims that he filed complaints about race discrimination and the behavior worsened.

Aaccording to the complaint, at one point he found pictures of clowns placed on a photo of three black firefighters who had retired from Station 1.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston ruled in favor of the city in 2012 but a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling last year, ordering a jury trial in the case. The trial lasted for five weeks but on Tuesday the jury found in favor of the city after less than six hours of deliberations, according to the city attorney’s office.

“The City of Oakland takes every allegation of discrimination seriously and promptly conducted independent investigations into each of his allegations pursuant to standard operating procedures,” City Attorney Barbara Parker said in a statement.

“The investigations did not uncover evidence to support Curtis’ allegations of retaliation or harassment,” Parker said.

--Bay City News