For the County Fire Service of Los Angeles, it is a clear red line: firefighters cannot attack their neighbors.
This is why the department has dismissed Adam Clint, a longtime fire captain of Santa Clarita, whose stormy dispute on leave with a man with some doors landed with a condemnation for assault crime.
“By attacking your neighbor and being found guilty of a crime, you have embarked on an incontesting driving a fire captain,” wrote firefighters Thomas Ewald in a letter of termination in January 2023. “Your misconduct has embarrassed and discredited the department.”
But the fire service will soon have to resume Clint.
In February, the Committee of the County Public Service voted unanimously to restore Clint, 51, and awarded him more than two years of salary.
The commissioners found that there was not enough evidence to support the charges that Clint called his neighbor, who is black, the word n and brandished a weapon before making him fall to the ground. They also found that Clint was stressed by the “aggressive” behavior and the “threatening” words of the neighbor, Robert Pope.
“His misconduct on July 3, 2021 was an isolated and unusual period in a judgment that could not be repeated,” wrote the commission manager in his report, who recommended that Clint’s sentence have a 30 -day suspension.
The fire service appeals to the decision, depositing a petition before the senior courtyard of April 14, declaring that it was “well at the discretion of the ministry” to dismiss Clint. It is not known where Clint, who won $ 295,000, including the services, the year of the assault, would be awarded if he returned to the department.
Steve Haney, Clint’s lawyer, said his client felt deep remorse for hitting Pope, but never denies having pointed a pistol or calling him a racial insult. A judge reduced Clint’s crime to an offense, which was then deleted from his file.
“The guy has no racist bone in his body,” said Haney, who asked why the county spent money for external lawyers to keep Clint out of a job. “It is a ridiculous waste of taxpayers money.”
Over the past four years, the Public Service Commission has forced the heads of department to take over dozens of workers whom they had tried to dismiss – including sheriff deputies, probation employees and social workers – costing the county back, according to files.
Of the approximately 65 employees that the Commission has moved to reintegrate since 2021, almost two thirds were peace agents of the Sheriff or Probation services, according to an examination of the commission and annual reports.
The commission is made up of five members, each appointed by a supervisor from the County of Los Angeles, which is used for $ 150 per meeting.
The city of Los Angeles has a similar commission, as well as panels of the Discipline of the Police Discipline. The union, which represents the basic officers of the Los Angeles police department, has managed to deal with the adoption of a voting measure allowing more civilians on board rights after a study has shown that civilians were regularly more lenient on the problem cops than their police colleagues.
John Donnut, chairman of the County Public Service Commission, said he and his colleagues generally agreed with the disciplinary decisions of the departments. He characterized the relationship between the county departments and the commission as “fairly civil”. In 2023, the Commission confirmed about three disciplinary decisions out of four.
After Jim McDonnell became a sheriff in 2014, he began to continue to challenge the reinstatements of the deputies commission who had been dismissed for lies, saying that he did not know where to affect an assistant who would not have the credibility to testify to the court.
Robert Luna, who has been a sheriff since 2022, has not filed any petition to challenge the decisions of the Commission concerning its deputies, according to the judicial archives.
Probation chief Guillermo Viera Rosa fought in court to cancel two decisions of the committee.
One of them involved an employee licensed in 2021 for buying a lobster lunch for a minor who was not on her workload and repeatedly visiting a gang member imprisoned without approval. A judge ordered the Commission in April to reconsider this decision. In the other case, which is underway, a deputy was dismissed in 2019 after video sequences showed that he had lied to a minor the fighter.
In 2022, the commission brought back the head of the Probation office Hellen Carter, who was dismissed, in part, for having lied to colleagues concerning a psychiatrist, a coroner, a bass pro fisherman, a trauma surgeon, an Olympic swimmer, an acrobatic pilot and an army veterinarian who had lost 70% of his hearing According to The Her Note. The Commission concluded that the decision to dismiss it was based on “false and unreliable allegations”.
The probation service continued to stop its reinstatement, claiming that it was a “burn and responsibility” and that its behavior was “blatant and persistent (not original)”. The department has lost.
Carter did not respond to an email. When she returned to the county in 2024, she collected more than half a million dollars of bags on foot, according to wage files.
The neighborhood spat almost immediately immediately.
On July 3, 2021, Pope’s wife called her to say that Clint had just reprimanded her for speeding on their Santa Clarita Cul-de-Sac.
Pope said he stopped at Clint’s, and the two presented themselves in an animated argument in the doorway, culminating with the captain pointing to a weapon on him and shouting to “withdraw the f – of my property”, punctuated by a racial insult.
Clint entered his house and reappeared with a firearm, according to Pope. While Pope retired to his car, where his two 14-year-old daughters were waiting, Clint knocked him out from behind, leaving him on the ground until he finds consciousness, said Pope. He said he had later discovered a bruise in the shape of a footprint on his back.
Clint first denied the sheriff deputies that he had struck Pope, but later admitted to hit him.
After making a statement to the deputies that morning, Pope arrived at the funeral of his sister, where he was supposed to be a carrier, just like everyone left.
The tensions between the families of Clint and Pope have worsened. In 2022, Clint continued Pope and his wife, Rozanna Avetyan, as well as the County of Los Angeles, arguing that the Sheriff deputies and the fires were biased in favor of the Pope on the basis of “his African-American ancestry”. Clint also said in the trial that he had not offered a regular procedure, “clearly because of his Caucasian race”. The case was rejected.
The Pope continued a year later for the battery. This case is in progress.
The pope and his wife said that the family had struggled to go from that day, becoming so reluctant to leave the house that they gave their dogs so that they would not have to meet Clint in walks. They finally decided to move away.
“I just don’t understand how he recovered his work,” said Pope. “It’s just breathtaking.”
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