Photo: FLLewis/A Writer’s Groove — Burbank police vehicle

Like a ticking time bomb, folks in the know have been waiting for an explosion of bad news and legal trouble to hit the city of Burbank. It happened on Thursday, May 28, but the bomb, in the form of a lawsuit, came from a surprising source — several members of the city’s own police force.

Late Thursday, Burbank’s top city officials were shaken up over the filing of the suit by Lieutenant Omar Rodriguez, along with officers Jamal Childs, Cindy Guillen-Gomez, Steve Karagiosian, and Elfego Rodriguez. On Friday, a slew of e-mails about the suit and its content landed in my in-box. Last night, I got a copy of the lawsuit as well. Also, stories broke in the media, including the Burbank Leader and the Daily News.

The lawsuit allegations are alarming and claim a rampant pattern of discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation in the Burbank Police Department. In the 50-plus page complaint there are numerous charges from the plaintiffs of witnessing or being subjected to offensive language based on color, race, gender or sexual orientation; examples, “fags,” “dykes,” “wetbacks,” “taco venders,” “beaners,” “spics,” “towel heads,” “Armos,” “Julios,”  ”niggers,” and  ”Malcolm X.”

Also, the suit questioned promotional practices on the force citing the example that “…no African-American employee in the entire history of the Burbank PD has ever been promoted above the title of ‘police officer.’” According to the suit, there are currently five black officers out of approximately 165 officers on the Burbank PD.

Photo: FLLewis/A Writer’s Groove — Burbank Police Chief Tim Stehr

 As I reported here on this blog, at the May 12 city council meeting I had a brief conversation with Burbank Police Chief Tim Stehr about the problems in his department and the discontent among some officers. Stehr admitted, “… there are some issues…” but insisted “… (we will ) work together to fix them.” Apparently, the chief’s efforts were not enough to stop the filing this lawsuit, which some media reports say could cost the city as much as $25 million dollars.

I’m a long time tax paying Burbank resident. Also, I’m an African American female. The allegations in this lawsuit are shocking and disturbing to me.  My confidence in the Burbank police department has been shattered. City officials need to move swiftly to either prove these allegations false or admit the failings of the police department and immediately come up with a plan to correct the problems with strong decisive actions.

There is a lot of fallout from the Black Friday death of a temp employee at a New York Wal-Mart store. The worker, Jdimytai Damour, was 6-5 and tipped the scales at 270 pounds. Nevertheless, when a bargain hungry throng of two thousand or so shoppers rammed through the doors, Damour was trampled to death. A few days ago, Damour’s family named Wal-Mart as a defendant in a wrongful death lawsuit.

Fred, not his real name, says he’s survived some dangerous Black Fridays at Wal-Mart. He remembers back in 2006, when the Las Vegas area Wal-Mart he was working at had more special sale items than ever before. There were additional police on hand and extra precautions. “We had opened the doors and erected barriers to hold back the crowds,” Fred says.  However, the situation went from calm and orderly to a riot when a manager declared over the loudspeaker that the merchandise would be distributed on a “first come first serve basis.”

“There was suddenly a loud roaring sound of people screaming, pushing forward. They attacked the police officers, Wal-Mart associates, anyone standing in front of the pallets of the items (electronic, toys, appliances, and house wares). I was at the door of the store but I could see the mass of humanity pushing, shoving, fighting, yelling, and behaving like a pride of lions on the first meal. Wal-Mart supervisors jumped onto the pallets and began to throw items into the crowd to save their employees from being crushed by shoppers. It took this effort and the depletion of the items to bring order. The police arrested at least 10 shoppers; five Wal-Mart employees were injured,” according to Fred now a former Wal-Mart employee.

Before I spoke with Fred, I thought the tragic death of a Wal-Mart employee on November 28 occurred during a rare episode of shopper insanity. Now, after listening to Fred recount his experience, clearly Wal-Mart has had crowd control problems before. It is really too bad the retailer did not make some serious changes to curtail the Black Friday mob mentality among shoppers at its stores before one man lost his life needlessly. 

 Like many I was shocked by the Black Friday death of a Wal-Mart store employee last month. In a totally out of control scene, a crowd of about two thousand eager shoppers broke down doors and stormed into a Wal-Mart in New York the morning after Thanksgiving. A temporary employee, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour, didn’t move fast enough and was trampled to death. Several others, including a pregnant woman, suffered minor injuries in the stampede.

Last week, the family of the trampled employee filed a wrongful-death lawsuit naming several defendants including Wal-Mart. In a statement, shortly after the tragedy, the nation’s largest retailer said: “The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority.” Hmm, is this really the case or has Wal-Mart been putting profit ahead of the safety of its workers and the public?

A former Wal-Mart temp employee, whom I’ll call “Fred,” worked for several years at a store in Las Vegas. Fred says the first year he stocked shelves and helped set up displays on Thanksgiving night. Fred has an extensive work resume, but he insists he was not prepared for the Black Friday bargain shoppers. “I was surprised at the volume of people and at the aggressiveness by which they literally ran to the display and grab the items. In fact, if not for the effort, (of) one of my co-workers to push me out of the way I probably would have been trampled in the stampede.”

At Wal-Mart, Black Friday is known as “Blitz Day” because shoppers blitz the store hunting for one-time bargains, according to Fred.

Tomorrow in part 2 of this report, Fred recounts the time a manager whipped a Black Friday crowd into a frenzy with just one phrase over the loudspeaker.