Chief’s hiring raised hopes

He was to be the architect of a remade Los Angeles Fire Department. Popular and polished, William Bamattre seemed to possess the political smarts and academic pedigree to force reform on a department considered progressive technologically but riven by gender-based discrimination and racial hostility.

Now, after 11 years as the department’s chief, Bamattre is being pilloried by politicians, firefighters and community activists as an ineffective and uninspiring leader, and may be on the verge of being forced from office by the very sorts of controversies that won him the job of chief.

If he leaves, more than one year shy of his planned retirement date, it will be the fallout from an acrimonious public battle over a black firefighter’s racial harassment lawsuit.

In 1995, Bamattre, then 43, rode a similar controversy into office. He succeeded 39-year veteran Donald Manning, who was forced to resign after weeks of council hearings into claims that female and black firefighters were being driven from the department by harassment and fire station hostility.

Bamattre had a single mandate: Change the culture. His priority, he said then, was to restore public confidence in the department.

“He was clearly the best choice,” said former Mayor Richard Riordan, who hired him. “People liked him, people respected him. He was the only person we could find who fit the bill: getting people to get along. He had the personality and the feel for it.”

Bamattre had grown up in Baldwin Hills, attended schools in the Crenshaw and Fairfax districts, and earned a degree in political science from Stanford University. It was there that he decided to become a firefighter after working to help pay his tuition on the university’s Fire Department. He started working for the Los Angeles Fire Department in January 1976.

Later, he earned a master’s degree in public administration from Cal State L.A. and pursued a political career. In 1989, he was elected to the City Council of the newly incorporated city of Dana Point; in 1991, he became its mayor.

Bamattre started strong as chief. He ordered an independent study of harassment and discrimination and put hiring on hold for two years to revamp recruitment and training in an effort to attract and keep more women and minorities.

He had an academic’s sensibilities, a view that institutional change ought to happen organically. “I wanted to change the attitude of the department as it relates to change itself,” he said Wednesday. “Instead of resisting change, to recognize that change is inevitable.”

But he found himself between a rock and a hard place. Veteran white firefighters complained that standards had been lowered to hire women and to meet the goals imposed by a consent decree that mandated the hiring of more minorities.

Diversity has increased -- particularly in the department’s management ranks -- during Bamattre’s tenure. But conflict -- between men and women, whites and blacks, management and the rank and file -- seems to have intensified. Instead of pushing the issue, Bamattre seems to have retreated.

“He was supposed to be an agent of change,” said Armando Hogan, president of the Stentorians, a group representing black firefighters. “He was going to make it more inclusive, more diverse.... But when he met resistance, what did he do?”

Not enough, his critics say.

In a letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa this month, local NAACP leaders demanded his firing.

“Chief Bamattre was given the opportunity to root out the racism and the sexism in the department and had over a decade to do so,” the letter said. “Unfortunately [he] did not take this responsibility seriously.”

Bamattre insists that he took a hard line against hazing and harassment, “but each individual wants to draw their own line about what’s appropriate and what’s not.” He inherited a disciplinary system that made it difficult for him to punish offenders appropriately, he said.

But some who worked with Bamattre say he could have done more to enforce the department’s zero-tolerance policy, that he never seemed to grasp the magnitude of the brewing problem.

“He’s got a good moral and ethical compass. He’s very bright. He’s not a racist,” said fire Commissioner Genethia Hudley-Hayes. “He just doesn’t like the discipline aspect. I think he believes that folks ought to know how to police themselves.... I think he doesn’t believe that’s his job.

“But when you’re running a department that has [this] history and culture, you need to take the velvet glove off and take the hammer in your hand and say no more.”

Many blame his management team for allowing problems to fester. Deputy chiefs sometimes failed to investigate complaints promptly or fairly, or didn’t bring them to Bamattre’s attention.

Unlike Police Chief William J. Bratton, Bamattre never used the bully pulpit to try to bring wayward employees in line. And observers say he waited too long to take the initiative in making the changes he said he needed.

“He’s a nice guy, and he’s not a strong leader,” said City Controller Laura Chick, whose audit of the department earlier this year found low morale and widespread perceptions of discrimination.

“He doesn’t like confrontation. He’s a professional firefighter, and on the operational side, he’s very good.”

Chick said she feels betrayed that Bamattre presided so quietly over an organization that he acknowledges now has ongoing problems with hazing and discrimination.

“He should have come forward and said, ‘We have problems. We need to talk about them,’ ” Chick said. “Why did he need an audit? Why does he need lawsuits?

“Why didn’t he go to every single fire station and sit with them and look at them and say, ‘Hazing is going to stop, and this is how and this is why. Any command officer at any station who doesn’t report hazing directly to me is going to be sent to Siberia.’ ”

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sandy.banks@latimes.com