I have refrained from addressing the issue of former Los Angeles Fire Department fireman, Tennie Pierce and his racial discrimination lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles after having been fed dog food from fellow firemen a few years back. Last month, the Pierce fiasco was all over local talk radio and television news, even making national news to a smaller degree. Why have I not posted anything concerning Tennie and his two scoops of dog food ingestion? I have no idea. Normally, this story would be something I would have enjoyed discussing, but for some reason I simply didn’t get around to posting a single entry about the whole mess. There’s no time like the present I suppose, and since the drama simply refuses to subside, I reason the time has come nigh for my input concerning the matter of Tennie Pierce vs. Los Angeles.
Basically, Tennie Pierce is an idiot.
It is truly inconceivable to me that an actual legitimate lawyer (hmm… is there really such a thing?), backed by an actual law firm would choose to represent a man such as Pierce for an incident as innocuous as what transpired two years ago–the dog food incident.
Anyway, who is Tennie Pierce? If you aren’t already familiar with the man, Pierce is a black ex-Los Angeles fireman, having served in that capacity for nearly 20 years. At one point in 2004, Pierce was subjected to a prank wherein his fellow firemen mixed dog food into a plate of spaghetti, presented it to Pierce who then proceeded to partake of the dish, swallowing two bites of the affected pasta before he realized his peers had pulled some sort of frivolity upon him, not because he could taste the dog food in the spaghetti, but simply because the other firemen were laughing hysterically at their frat house-style deception.
Pierce claimed he was subjected to racial discrimination due to the prank. He secured the services of lawyer Genie Harrison (who is also currently representing several LAFD firewomen on discrimination charges–cases that appear to hold much more weight than the Pierce case) and marched forward in a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. Upon the horribly misguided advice of LA city attorney Rocky Delgadillo, Tennie Pierce was eventually awarded $2.7 million of LA taxpayer money by the city council in an overwhelming 11 to 1 ruling, with councilman Dennis Zine the only dissenting (and obviously sane) voice. I don’t blame Zine for now requesting an outside legal team defend against the Pierce case–Delgadillo proved nothing but impotent.
Cue John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of the Los Angeles based talk radio station KFI640. Championing the taxpayers of Los Angeles, these two radio hosts, through various means, managed to bring to the fore telling evidence in the form of old photographs featuring Tennie Pierce engaging in various pranks upon other firemen that are flagrantly racist and shamelessly degrading. However, in light of the new photos, the city council continued their hard-headed, out-of-touch-with-reality ways and protracted their original judgment awarding nearly three million dollars to a man who ate two spoonfuls of dog food. With strengthened fury, John and Ken continued their rant against Pierce and the LA city council. Publicity of the case became top evening news.
Pressure on the city council grew to titanic proportions until the intervention of Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa grew inescapable. He could no longer ignore the cries of outrage from the public. Late last month, Villaraigosa vetoed the city council’s original adjudication. I’ve never been a fan of Villaraigosa, but I will give credit where credit is due: This was a rare, smart decision.
Of course, Genie Harrison swore the repercussions of this choice would cost the city far more if the Pierce case were to go to trial.
Here are the basic no-brainers apropos to this case.
1. Tennie Pierce had a nickname–“The Big Dog.”
2. Pierce was fed the dog food as a prank from fellow firefighters who were annoyed by his chest-thumping arrogance during a department volleyball match in which Pierce was heard by many to shout, “feed the big dog” repeatedly throughout the game every time he scored a point, spiked the ball, or did anything worthy of celebration on his part.
3. In firehouses throughout Los Angeles and the nation, frat house shenanigans play a modest part in relieving stress, rites of initiation, promotion, retirement, etc. This is nothing new or shocking. Personally, if acting like children helps maintain the sanity of firefighters around the country, who am I question their Neanderthal-like rites of passage. As long as they put out fires, I’m happy.
4. Under the circumstances, feeding dog food to Tennie Pierce was not racially motivated, nor was there any intent of racial discrimination on the part of the firemen who fed Pierce the dog food. While not an innocent prank (because in all actuality, there’s no such thing), deeming it racist is idiocy.
5. The surfacing of various photographs clearly depicting Pierce actively perpetrating and participating in numerous pranks against other firefighters are incontrovertibly racist and homophobic. These photos are the central argument for the Villaraigosa veto. Here are only a few of the photos…
Prank: “Oy vey! I’m Gay!” What the fuck? And Pierce felt he had a right to bring a racial discrimination lawsuit against the city? Of course, these photos came out after the lawsuit, but I’m sure he was hoping they would never surface. Too bad for him.
In these pictures, Pierce can be seen assisting in holding a man down, grasping his genitals, and preparing to shave his naughty bits. Ultimately, the prankee came out unscathed because it was just a PRANK!.
Also, the last picture depicts Pierce pouring water into another fireman’s mouth via a garden hose. This looks to go beyond pranking. It’s simply brutal water-boarding torture.
continued from above…
Now however, it appears that Pierce lawyer, Genie Harrison is looking not to take the case to court as she so angrily threatened after the veto last month. Instead, it looks as if she and Pierce realize that any meaningful award will not come from the court system. With the above pictures, I can’t imagine a sensible jury anywhere bestowing any sort of meaningful reward in favor of Tennie Pierce.
Of course, there have been boneheaded verdicts in the past that have squarely followed race lines. This I believe is not the case to champion. Tennie Pierce deserves every ounce of ridicule, humiliation, and disdain he’s received from the public as a result of his case against the city of Los Angeles. I do not want one penny of my tax money going to shady and despicable man looking for a quick and easy dollar by pulling the race card in a situation that was clearly not racially motivated.
Shame on Tennie Pierce and shame on Genie Harrison (may you never win another case throughout the remainder of your career.)
On a side note, and in reference to the bleeding-heart story further down the page courtesy of the LA Times, Tennie Pierce’s claims of time as a member of the Denver Broncos NFL team are quite spurious. No one from the Broncos of years past remembers Pierce. No records of him exist. No one knows who the hell he is, and they deny he was ever signed to the team, let alone he ever played a pre-season game.
Settlement talks reopen in bias case
L.A. officials are trying to strike a deal to close the debate over hazing of a firefighter whose lawsuit has prompted so much controversy.
Los Angeles officials have reopened talks with the lawyer for former firefighter Tennie Pierce as the two sides seek to settle a racial discrimination case that has upended city politics in recent weeks.
Although officials would not discuss the matter on the record, one person close to the talks said they are trying to strike a deal that would end Pierce’s case against the city and close debate over his attempt to secure a $2.7-million payout.
Pierce, a nearly 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Fire Department, sued the city after colleagues in his station house fed him dog food mixed with spaghetti sauce and then allegedly taunted him for months after the incident.
Details of the new proposed settlement were being closely guarded, but sources familiar with the talks said both sides were attempting to craft an agreement that would structure any payment in a way that would make clear that much of the money to Pierce was to compensate for lost salary and pension benefits — and that his payout would cover his legal bills as well. One official said the deal also might involve setting aside a portion of the money for Fire Department reforms.
In settlement talks earlier this year, the city and Pierce’s attorneys discussed providing at least $1.3 million to buy out his pension plan at a rate as if Pierce was a 30-year employee, according to a transcript of a City Council closed session on the case from June 21. Pierce, at that time, was six months shy of serving 20 years.
Pierce, a tall and broad-shouldered African American, was fed dog food after a 2004 volleyball game in which he proclaimed himself the “Big Dog.”
In pursuing his lawsuit against the city, Pierce has argued that the incident and its aftermath were humiliating and made it impossible for him to stay with the department. Critics of the deal have cited Pierce’s “Big Dog” remark as evidence that the incident was intended as an innocent joke and not racially motivated, and have noted that Pierce himself admits to having engaged in pranks as a firefighter.
Nevertheless, in the weeks since the council first overwhelmingly approved the deal, it has sparked outrage on both sides, often with a clear racial subtext. In interviews, many African Americans have tended to side with Pierce, while many whites have been markedly less sympathetic.
Last month, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vetoed the original settlement amid a wave of public criticism and radio talk show jibes. The council then reversed itself and upheld Villaraigosa’s veto.
That could propel the Pierce case to trial, but the city’s interest in settling grows out of the sense, shared by many city officials, that a jury verdict could end up costing taxpayers more than a deal.
That conviction is based in part on a broader view of the case than the mere act of Pierce eating dog food. Last summer, professional mediator Joel Grossman considered the case and sanctioned the $2.7-million proposed settlement. According to a source familiar with that mediation, Grossman reached that conclusion in part because he believed that Pierce suffered long after the dog food incident.
That source said news of the prank quickly spread throughout the Fire Department, and firefighters across the city would tease Pierce wherever he went. Some called his home and left messages with barking sounds. Others would ask which he preferred, Alpo or Purina. Fire Department officials knew of the teasing but allowed it to continue, thus arguably making them complicit in a workplace environment that Pierce found increasingly hostile.
In a deposition, one top official in the Fire Department — whom the source described as a high-ranking African American — conceded that the harassment of Pierce appeared to him to be racially motivated. If the case goes to trial, that deposition could be used against the city and could incline a jury to punish the department and city with a large award. The mediator indicated to the lawyers in the case that that deposition weighed heavily on him in recommending the $2.7-million deal, the source said.
Although the source did not name that fire official, Millage Peaks, a battalion chief who is African American, was deposed in July. On Monday, Peaks declined to comment about his deposition, but he has in the past spoken out publicly about racism and harassment in the Fire Department.
Advocates of settling the case also stressed that the amount includes legal fees. If the case goes to trial and Pierce wins, he probably would be entitled to legal fees on top of whatever a jury might award him in damages. And since the case already has a long history — that would only grow more extensive given a trial — some estimate that Pierce’s legal bill could top $1 million.
At the same time, there are incentives for Pierce’s lawyers to negotiate. Pierce admitted to engaging in pranks himself, which could weaken his case in the eyes of a jury. And some jurors might not sympathize with giving a large sum over what the city could argue was a relatively trivial act of harassment.
Reached Monday, Grossman confirmed that he had mediated the deal, but declined to discuss it, saying he needed permission from the lawyers on both sides. The city attorney’s press office declined to comment on negotiations because the case was still being litigated.
Still, any proposed deal is likely to stir controversy again, and some council members are wary of supporting a large payout.
“The overwhelming majority of the public is clearly against the settlement,” said Councilman Dennis Zine. “At least in my office, all the calls and e-mails that we received said, ‘Councilman, you have the courage to stand up and do what’s right.’ ”
Zine also said that he would be leery of any large settlement offer. “A million dollars is too much,” he said.
Councilwoman Jan Perry, by contrast, voted to settle the case for $2.7 million and then voted later to override the mayor’s veto of that agreement.
On Monday, she said she did not have any firsthand knowledge of further talks in the case, although she said she had heard buzz around City Hall that negotiations were continuing.
She stressed that she would be open to any deal that “drives the city into stopping such patterns and practices of the city allowing and letting stand a hostile work environment.”
Perry said that if talks were ongoing, she wouldn’t expect to see another settlement in the neighborhood of $2.7 million. She said “it would be surprising if it was in the same ballpark” because objections by the mayor and some other council members were based on the amount.
(Here is a shameful, sob-story look at Pierce post-veto. Leave it to the perpetually subscriber-sliding LA Times to write such abhorent drivel.)
For firefighter, sense of brotherhood shattered
Before he was Big Dog in the fire station, he was Big Fella because of his giant frame and Bigfoot because of his size 15 boots. Before there was the dog food in his spaghetti, there was the noose draped over his station locker and the white flour sprinkled in his bed.
And before Tennie Pierce became the Los Angeles Fire Department’s $2.7-million man — a symbol of racial discrimination to some and political correctness gone wrong to others — he was an ordinary firefighter, who had spent 17 years pledging allegiance to the department’s notion of brotherhood.
That allegiance began unraveling two years ago, when a firefighter at Pierce’s Westchester station mixed dog food into his dinner — a practical joke intended to “humble” him, the department’s investigative report said, for “declaring himself Big Dog” in a volleyball game.
Pierce sued the city for racial harassment last year, after enduring what he describes as months of taunts and retaliation. The City Council voted to settle his case for $2.7 million last month, but, after a public uproar, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vetoed the settlement.
Pierce’s claim and its repercussions — a respected fire department unmasked; a popular fire chief dispatched; a racially divided populace at odds — unhinged the city and unmoored the man.
“I didn’t expect it to go the way it went,” said Pierce, whose public claim and private life — from his work habits to the state of his marriage — provided weeks of fodder for talk radio programs. Hosts such as John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou on KFI-AM (640) fielded dozens of calls from disgruntled white firefighters, who castigated Pierce for “playing the race card” and produced photos of him joining in the hazing of others.
The storm took Pierce by surprise. “I always felt I was part of a great brotherhood,” he said. “I know I have always been upright and fair. When I see how the masses turned on me….” He shrugs his giant shoulders and stares at the floor.
For some, he’s become a caricature — a big, strong, black man brought down by a couple of bites of dog food. But to his friends and family, the reality is considerably more complicated.
“The Fire Department was Tennie’s life,” said L.A. firefighter and friend Johnny Green. “He would much rather be at work than going through this foolishness.”
Pierce knows those photos of him standing over firefighters smeared with condiments and shaving cream made him a lightning rod for criticism. But the pranks weren’t done to hurt anyone, he said. “Basically, it’s a celebration of love. It’s your birthday, your last day at the station…. I’ve never heard a guy say, ‘Stop. Don’t do this to me.’ ”
But Green said Pierce was one of relatively few black firefighters who participated in hazing rituals. “He assimilated with those guys” at his station, Green said. He went on ski trips with them, helped work on their houses, spent his days off with them riding Harleys.
“That’s why the betrayal he feels is so strong,” Green said. “He’s the O.J. of the Fire Department.”
*
Recognized by strangers
Pierce is 6 feet 5 and weighs more than 250 pounds, so it’s hard for him to hide. Strangers recognize him at the gym, at his daughter’s school. People he doesn’t know feel free to scold him.
“There are all those people out there casting stones,” he said. “Reporters standing on my porch, [confronting] my daughter coming home from school.”
His lawsuit has not only angered many whites but has also divided black firefighters and made Pierce a pariah among men who were his friends.
The black firefighters organization the Stentorians has refused to back his lawsuit. “Right case, wrong guy,” one black captain said. Because Pierce participated in hazing rituals, supporting Pierce would undercut the group’s official stance that “no member be subjected to any form of unprofessional behavior or practices in the workplace.”
The rift is hard for Pierce to bear, Green said. “He’s a teddy bear. Did he have fun and play games? Yeah. Hazing, condiments … that was all good-natured fun. Tennie did that real well.”
The dog food was another matter. There are three rules that every firefighter knows, Green and others say. “You don’t mess with people’s family, you don’t mess with their safety equipment, you don’t mess with their food,” Green said. “What they did to him crossed the line.”
Pierce has been off work now — relying on a combination of sick leave, disability, vacation and administrative leave — for more than a year, collecting a portion of his salary while he spends his days working out, visiting doctors and therapists, and helping out at his daughter’s track practices.
The enforced idleness has been hard on their marriage, his wife says. Pierce is often irritable and unable to sleep, ashamed that he must rely on his wife’s salary to support the family.
His case is headed for trial next year, though city officials could offer another settlement. But his career as a firefighter is over, he said.
Pierce denied rumors that he has been visiting other cities to look for a firefighting job. “I’m 51. My body is beat up,” he said. He wants to go back to college “and start my life over again.”
*
Football career envisioned
Born and raised in South Los Angeles, Pierce left Cal State Northridge five credits shy of graduation, he said, envisioning a pro football career. He said he was signed by the Denver Broncos but was injured during a preseason game in 1980 and never played during a regular season.
He married and had two children, then divorced and wound up with custody of his infant daughter and toddler son. He was working as a pipe fitter when a friend told him that the Los Angeles Fire Department — then under a consent decree mandating the hiring of minorities — had openings. He joined the department in 1987.
A year later, his daughter, then 5, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. His older sister moved in with him to help care for the child, who was bedridden, had a tracheotomy tube in her throat and needed twice-daily trips from Inglewood to UCLA for treatment. She died in 1989, just after her sixth birthday. His son is now 26.
The next year, Pierce remarried, and the couple later adopted a 3-year-old girl. His wife watched him throw himself into his work; the demands of his new job seemed to help ease his grief, she said.
“It meant learning a new language and a new way of thinking, a whole different culture,” Pierce said.
Pranks and hazing were a part of that culture. In his first station assignment in the San Fernando Valley, Pierce got a taste, and made a choice.
“We were practicing knots,” he recalled, “and somebody laid a noose right in front of my locker.” He threw it in the trash without telling anybody.
“You want the job so bad, you don’t want to stir the pot,” Pierce said. “You go up there and tell the captain, then the captain calls everybody into the kitchen and now I’ve created a hostile work environment for myself.”
Nor did he complain later, when a buddy sprinkled flour in his bed, leaving his dark skin dusted white. “It wasn’t mean,” he said. “It was like that old saying, ‘Boys will be boys.’ ”
“People criticize him [now] for complaining,” said his lawyer, Genie Harrison. “But Tennie’s got 17 years of doing nothing but laughing about the jokes that were played on him.”
Pierce said he was so shocked and ashamed when his station mates confessed that they had tricked him into eating dog food that he didn’t even tell his wife when he went home.
Then the calls from other black firefighters “started coming through on my home phone…. ‘Hey, Pierce, I heard what happened…. I’m glad it was you and not me, because if it happened to me, there’d be people in the hospital.’ That’s how my wife found out.”
The news traveled quickly through the department, he said. Firefighters began teasing him, calling him ‘dog food boy,’ barking like a dog when he walked by.
Pierce decided to sue, he said, only when the environment became unbearable. “I’ve been on this department for a long time. I’ve done everything they’ve ever asked me to do,” he said.
“All I asked for was three things: transfer me, do a thorough investigation, let me have some kind of psychological help to deal with this.”
He received got counseling and was transferred, but was later ordered back to the Westchester station.
And although the Fire Department’s records show that the battalion chief overseeing the Westchester station did, indeed, call for a full investigation, Deputy Chief Andrew Fox, who heads the department’s disciplinary division, rejected that recommendation. Instead, he relied on firefighters’ written statements to administer three suspensions ranging from six days to one month off without pay.
The fallout is still reverberating through the city’s fire stations. “There are 3,600 firefighters that love the Los Angeles Fire Department and want it to have a sterling reputation,” said Pat McOsker, former president of the firefighters union. “They are heartbroken that a handful of incidents are dragging us through the mud.
“The natural tendency is to be mad at those responsible: ‘Why couldn’t you just suffer this silently?’ ” he said. “I’m not saying that’s right, but that’s what happens.”
Green said Pierce is heartbroken too. “He really was the Big Dog … the biggest, blackest man in that station, with more seniority than any of them,” he said. “When they gave him that dog food, they were sending him a message: He would never be one of them.
“I’m sad for Tennie, that’s he’s got to go through this, change his phone numbers, move his kid’s school,” Green said. “But this case needs to go to court so people will see what it’s like for African Americans.”
WTF?
What a joke! This guy is just lazy. He saw an oppurtunity to make a ton of money from playing the race card. They should have fed this piece of shit that tainted dog food from China.
Tennie Pierce is a disgrace to all those African-Americans who paved the way for him to have a job with the fire department in the first place! He should be ashamed of himself bringing this frivolous and ridiculous lawsuit against the city at the cost of hard working taxpayers. I am a 50 year old Hispanic female and I could share tons of stories of discrimination I have suffered in the worksplace, sexual and otherwise, and I never filed a lawsuit, mainly because when I was being discrminated against there was no such thing as sexual harassment or workplace bullying. Bottom line, we all have to take our share of crap. Any intelligent person knows the difference between “workplace b.s.” and “real serious harassment”. I’ve seen too many blacks file these types of lawsuits or go on medical leaves because someone looked at them wrong. It’s reverse discrimination to play on the guilt of the establishment and award some loser a million dollars. it’s a sad day for Los Angeles.
[…] situations like this. First, we need to get the settlement amounts under control. Whether it is Tennie Pierce and the Los Angeles Fire Department, who was a prankster, then fell for a prank, and t…, or an inmate, who was beaten by another inmate and won $1 million, we are paying too much. […]
I am late getting all of the facts on the Pierce vs. Los Angeles FD thing, however my two cents are as follows:
I can understand how Tennie Pierce may have experienced a hostile workplace following the prank, however I think his credibility is damaged once the pictures of him participating in previous pranks arise. I agree with the Stentorians of California assessment that this is the “Right case (but the), wrong man. ”
Honestly, I think all of the pranks in the fire service should cease. An able firefighter who has earned a spot with the department should not have to be humiliated or violated in order to gain acceptance or approval from the other firefighters.
The respect and trust should be earned in training and out on the fireground by the firefighters proverbial courage under fire. A firefighter allowing you to hang a noose on his or her locker, refer to him or her in derogatory terms, and/or ingest dog food is not indicative of them being an able and trustworthy firefighter. Rather, it simply means that the firefighter is willing to do anything in order to gain acceptance and approval of his or her peers, which in my book is not respectable or trustworthy behavior.
The fire service is riddled with discrimination, racism, and bigotry otherwise why do hardly any departmental demographics match the demographics of their respective cities.
Furthermore, why is an African-American male with a degree from one of the top universities in the world, IFSAC certifications as a firefighter, national regsitration as an EMT, and exceptional performance in a recent hiring process denied a job? This is my reality and I for one have no other answer for this except that this is a result of the blatant discrimination that is highly apparent in the fire service.
I attribute this reality not only to the ignorant white males who think that firefighting should “stay in the family” per se, but also to the likes of a Tennie Pierce who decided not to take a stand a long time ago and refrain from participating in similar pranks that he would later become a victim of.
Honestly, I blame you all for missing the big picture. Firefighting is about saving lives, not about discrimination by whites or questionable lawsuits by a black. Additionally the taxpayers money should not be used to pay firefighters who use their spare time to play grabass or orchestrate million dollar lawsuits. You should all be ashamed! Regardless of your skin color, if you are not a part of the solution then you are part of the problem.
In conclusion, I seriously doubt that the affluent residents in California (who recently lost nearly everything due to a wildfire) give a damn about the color or gender of a firefighter; they simply want there lives, property, and environments protected.
The best man or woman should always get the job. Many times this is not the case and anyone who says otherwise either has their head in the sand or is the epitome of a liar.
Mr. White, you are a man after my own heart.
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_8446076
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Bullying and harassment is not fun to endure. Maybe he shouldn’t have made it about race but clearly they were having fun at his expense and it should not have been tolerated by the fire department! .