U.S. Files Job Bias Lawsuit Against City of Torrance : Employment: The city is accused of discriminating against minorities who applied for jobs in the police and fire departments. Back pay, offers of employment and retroactive seniority are sought.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Torrance, alleging it has engaged in a “pattern and practice” of discrimination that has denied African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latinos jobs as firefighters or police officers.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeks back pay, offers of employment and retroactive seniority for individuals who were denied sworn police and fire positions in Torrance. Federal officials declined to specify how many unsuccessful applicants could be affected by the suit.

Torrance officials say the Justice Department wants the city to create a $3-million fund for such applicants.

City officials disputed the allegations and said they reject the “extortionate demand . . . to implement impermissible racial quotas.”

“The government’s claims are totally groundless,” City Atty. John L. Fellows III said in a strongly worded statement.

Fellows said he hoped the Clinton Administration would appoint an assistant attorney general to provide “guidance and direction to the civil rights division and follow through on its campaign promise” not to impose such quotas.

Negotiations recently broke off between city officials and Justice Department representatives over a consent agreement that would have avoided the civil rights suit. Among the unresolved issues was the amount of compensation that would be paid to the unsuccessful applicants, said sources familiar with the negotiations.

Torrance is the largest of four Los Angeles County cities to be hit with a Justice Department discrimination complaint since 1990. The other cities--Alhambra, El Monte and Pomona--have since reached consent agreements. El Monte had to be sued by the Justice Department before it reached an agreement last year to pay as much as $330,000 to African-Americans and Asian-Americans denied jobs as firefighters or police officers since 1985.

Most of the Los Angeles County complaints were initiated by the Justice Department after the agency surveyed employment reports that municipalities are required to file with the federal government. Federal investigators began their inquiry of Torrance’s hiring practices in May, 1991. The investigators determined that written examinations given by the police and fire departments for entry-level positions were biased and unlawful under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The probe also found that African-American police employees were subjected to derogatory comments from white supervisors and colleagues.

In a prepared statement released by the Justice Department on Wednesday, the city was accused of using the written examinations to disproportionately screen out minority job candidates and of providing black employees with employment conditions less favorable than those provided to whites. The suit also names Police Chief Joseph C. De Ladurantey and Fire Chief R. Scott Adams as defendants.

“The Department of Justice is committed to the removal of discriminatory barriers to employment opportunities for all Americans, including African-Americans, Latinos and Asians,” said James P. Turner, acting assistant attorney general in the civil rights division. “Where those barriers are found to exist, we will seek to make whole all persons who have been victims of the discriminatory practices.”

Fellows, the city attorney, said in a written statement that a “problem with the government’s position is its unyielding insistence that 54% of the applicants for police and fire jobs should be minorities, because that is the proportion of minorities in the Los Angeles County work force. That is absurd on its face, because it does not subtract from the labor pool minorities who are not legal residents or who do not have high school degrees.”

City officials have previously said that Torrance has actively tried to recruit minority police officers and firefighters, but that many cities compete for a “small number of qualified applicants.”

In defending the city’s written examination system, officials have said the Civil Service Department gives Police Department applicants a standardized test that is utilized by law enforcement agencies throughout the state. The Fire Department exam, city officials noted, was purchased from a firm that specializes in devising tests for municipalities.

Fire Department officials have said their recruitment of minorities used to be hampered by the city’s civil service “rule of three,” which stated that only candidates with the top three test scores for a job could be interviewed.

The City Council last year replaced that rule with a “banding” requirement allowing the Fire Department to interview a group, or band, of candidates who score above 90%. The Police Department still hires under the “rule of three” requirement.

According to figures released by the Justice Department in November, of the 233 sworn officers in the Police Department, three (1.2%) were black, 15 (6.4%) were Latino, and six (2.5%) were Asian. Of the 160 Fire Department employees, one (0.6%) was black, and two (1.2%) were Latino. There were no Asian employees in the Fire Department last year.

Current employment figures were not immediately available. However, Fellows said 25% of the police officers hired since 1988 are minorities and 35% of the firefighters most recently hired are minorities.

The latest U.S. Census figures reflect a more diverse city and region. Of Torrance’s 133,000 residents, 22% are Asian-American, 10% are Latino and 1.7% are African-American. Of Los Angeles County’s 8.7 million residents, 40.8% are Anglo, 37.8% are Latino, 10.5% are African-American and 10.2% are Asian-American.

Because Torrance’s employees are drawn from throughout Los Angeles County and beyond, the Justice Department compares the city’s minority hiring to minority population statistics for the region.