Hazing, sexism and racist remarks: Inside the Sacramento Fire Department’s ‘hostile’ culture

Black and female employees of the Sacramento Fire Department have been subjected to harassment, bullying and racial insensitivity, and the predominantly white and male department has done little to increase diversity in its ranks, current and former employees told The Sacramento Bee in a series of interviews.

Some former employees said they often did not feel welcome and were targeted by colleagues and high-ranking officials. They heard fellow employees use offensive language to describe minorities.

The Sacramento Fire Department is now the focus of an internal city investigation after an employee resigned, citing the department’s “hostile work environment.”

Just 3% of the department’s 657 employees are Black – a lower percentage than just a few years ago – in a city where 11.3% of residents are Black, according to a November 2020 Sacramento Audit Report. The audit also showed 10% of fire personnel are women – the lowest percentage of any department in the city.

Yet a Diversity Advisory Board created in 2016 to encourage the department to diversify is often overlooked and consistently underfunded, the board’s co-chair said.

“There’s an old saying: Show me your budget, and I’ll show you your priorities,” Capt. Jaymes Butler said. He said diversity is not a priority for the city, fire department or firefighters union.

“It’s just talk,” he said.

Butler has been with the department for 26 years and plans to retire in less than four years. He said he is the only Black captain in the SFD.

He said when he joined the department in the mid-1990s, there were roughly 50 Black firefighters. Now there are about 20. He has been part of every committee focused on diversity.

“I’ve done it all. We don’t have any funding. If I have to shame the city, the fire chief and the union into doing the right thing, then that’s what I have to do,” he said.

Fire department officials said several steps have been taken to increase diversity, including participating in the city’s Race and Gender Equity Action Plan, a five-year initiative to increase employee retention and promotion of people of color and women.

“Our department sets clear expectations that workplace discrimination and harassment will not be tolerated. In partnership with the City’s Office of Diversity & Equity, we are committed to building a more representative, equitable and inclusive fire department,” said Sacramento Fire Chief Gary Loesch.

But interviews with current and former fire department employees show some Black and female employees do not feel welcome.

Hazing, racist remarks in fire department

Desmond Lewis – a Black man – always dreamed of becoming a firefighter.

He accomplished that when he passed the academy and joined the Sacramento Fire Department in March 2020.

Less than one year later — with just a few weeks left in his probation period — Lewis submitted an email letter of resignation from the department to Loesch on Jan. 31.

The former firefighter, 27, told The Sacramento Bee that his experience with the department included racial insensitivity, bullying and harassment from colleagues. It was enough for him to walk away from his “dream job.”

“I am fully aware that this is not the stance of every individual in the department and I have met some incredible men and women, but I have also encountered enough racism and discrimination against myself as well as members in the community, that I cannot continue to work with, put my life on the line for, or keep my head down around people who I do not believe have my best interest,” Lewis said in his resignation letter.

His allegations and resignation led the Sacramento Fire Department to request an investigation by the city of Sacramento’s Equal Employment Opportunity Office. SFD public information officer Capt. Keith Wade said in a statement that an investigation into the allegations has begun.

“A meeting was set between the firefighter and the fire chief so that the chief could learn the details surrounding the firefighter’s experiences within the department. The experiences shared were cause for concern,” Wade said in an email. “The chief requested the City’s Equal Employment Opportunity officer to investigate the statements shared by the employee. These investigations are ongoing. Every instance of misconduct is thoroughly investigated, and the culpable personnel held accountable.”

Department officials said they could not directly respond to Lewis’ allegations because of the active investigation. But Wade said diversity and inclusion have been priorities for the department and denounced all forms of discrimination and harassment.

Lewis said he confided in a dozen other firefighters — both current and retired — and discovered a cultural issue within the department. He said he isn’t the only person who has faced discrimination or harassment, and that his decision to go public inspired others to share their experiences.

“The whole reason I resigned was to inspire some kind of change,” Lewis said in an interview. “This is just my way of doing it. I’m just looking for ways to amplify my voice.”

Lewis was encouraged to stay with the department and lead a culture change. But he declined and stood by his resignation.

When Lewis joined the department, he was placed at Station 10 in south Sacramento, where he said he first encountered racism.

“I regularly heard racially charged remarks, was suggested not to ‘congregate with just my own’ and was even questioned about my loyalty to the department because of the color of my skin,” Lewis wrote in his resignation letter.

Lewis recalled some of the alarming statements he heard from colleagues during last summer’s nationwide protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. For example, during a conversation about Black Lives Matter with a fellow firefighter, Lewis said his loyalty seemed to be questioned when he was asked if he saw himself as a Black firefighter or a firefighter.

Lewis faced another incident a few months later at dinner with colleagues when he was the only person of color at the table.

The group was watching protests on television. Lewis said a captain shouted to the television, “Can’t these people stop protesting and go back to shooting each other?”

Despite not referencing Black people specifically, Lewis told The Bee that type of rhetoric was used regularly.

A woman colleague privately confided in Lewis, telling him that in dinner meetings another firefighter referred to his Black or African American patients as the N-word.

Lewis’ resignation inspired others to come forward to share their experiences with The Sacramento Bee.

Like a fraternity

Shannon Panameno, 50, retired as a firefighter from the department in 2015.

In an email to The Bee, she wrote that SFD had a culture of hazing and a lack of accountability for bad behavior.

Panameno wrote that veteran firefighters “tested” and hazed new recruits with pranks, practical jokes, sexual harassment, tests of loyalty, wrestling, altering of protective gear and passive-aggressive behavior. She said if a firefighter took offense to hazing, they were told they were “not cut out for the job.”

There’s a male-dominated culture within the fire service that pressures new hires to fit in, she said. Those who don’t, Panameno said, are “labeled as uptight and untrustworthy.”

“The fire department culture, there is a kind of ... it’s almost like a fraternity,” she said. ”It’s almost like going to work in a male locker room or a frat house.”

Panameno said she was a victim of hazing in a summer 2001 training exercise that involved her being strapped to a stokes basket, which is used to transport fire victims, and raised to the rooftop of Station 7. She was left sweltering in the sun for 20 minutes.

She said she felt humiliated and helpless. At the time, she was a student paramedic intern and had no union to represent her. She didn’t have another job to fall back on and said she kept quiet about the treatment.

In the summer of 2012, Panameno said she and her team responded to a car fire and hanging in the parking lot of Garcia Bend Park in the Pocket. Panameno said she tried to resuscitate the victim but was told to back off by her superiors, and the man died. She was devastated. She said her captain did not seem to care. She believed this was the day her career ended.

“There aren’t words to describe the frustration I felt in that moment,” said Panameno. “That their disrespect for me was so great, that they let it affect their decision to help me resuscitate this young man.”

Wade, the fire department spokesman, said fire personnel placed a heart monitor on the man at the scene “and the patient was determined deceased.” He added “no internal investigation was initiated as there was no report of misconduct.”

Panameno retired in November of 2015 due to, she said, a “complete” nervous breakdown. Her treatment by the department had taken a toll on her physically, mentally and emotionally, she said.

When she heard about Lewis’s story and his experience with the SFD, she said she felt obligated to speak out.

Another former firefighter, who asked to not be identified because they are in a related field and are fearful of retribution, said the incidents Lewis and Panameno described are not uncommon.

“No matter what your experience is there, whether it’s racism, sexism or any of that kind of stuff, it comes back to it’s a very small percentage of people that are doing that stuff, but when they do it, the infrastructure, the leadership, is not there to fix it,” said the former department employee. “You’re going to have bad people and that’s the administration’s job to weed them out to make our department better, not let it continue.”

Lack of Sacramento firefighter diversity

Local 522, the union representing city firefighters, denied the accusations made by Lewis.

“We disagree that there is a culture of bullying, racist comments, or (a) toxic environment to work in the Sacramento Fire Department,” Local 522 president Chris Andrew wrote on the union’s Facebook page after the Sacramento News & Review reported on Lewis’ resignation. “Local 522 has also always supported the Fire Department’s efforts in expanding diversity for our department. It is the City of Sacramento who will not support those efforts with actual funding for any type of diversity recruitment or outreach efforts.”

Roberto Padilla, a spokesman for Local 522, said he could not comment on the allegations made by Lewis because an investigation is being conducted. However, Padilla said the union works in the best interest of employees.

“As far as the investigation goes, we are looking forward to those findings. We support the city looking into it,” said Padilla.

The Sacramento Fire Department reported that just 4% of its employees were Black in 2018, according to a city audit. That number dropped to 3% by 2020. Meanwhile, the fire department is 71% white. Roughly 32% of Sacramento’s population is white.

The fire department’s Diversity Advisory Board highlighted a six-point recommendation to address the lack of diversity in the department so that it better reflects the city’s makeup. Those recommendations included community outreach and recruitment development, student and youth programs, career pathway development partnerships, reinstating the paramedic student intern program, expanding the fire reserve by incorporating pathways to prepare youth and adults for a career in the fire department, and ensuring SFD utilizes the best practices found in departments in other cities in achieving and maintaining a diverse workforce.

Butler, co-chair of the diversity committee, said the department currently has an opening for deputy fire chief. He said it’s an opportunity for SFD to improve its culture by selecting an individual who increases diversity within the department.

“You want to prove that you want to make change in the department, [well] you have an opening on your command staff,” Butler said.

This story was originally published March 11, 2021 at 5:00 AM.