The head of San Diego’s lifeguard union has accused the city’s fire chief of deliberately manipulating public safety data to justify expanding his budget.
In a lawsuit filed against the city Tuesday, San Diego Lifeguard Sgt. Ed Harris claimed that for more than a year Fire Chief Brian Fennessy “modified the 9-1-1 response procedures” for water-related emergencies.
The lawsuit claims the change was made so that incoming calls would be sent directly to the city’s fire department instead of the city’s lifeguard division, as had been the practice for more than 30 years. The idea was to inflate the fire department’s workload so it could hire more personnel, according to the lawsuit.
“The changes caused confusion for dispatchers and resulted in delayed responses to water-related emergency calls,” according to the lawsuit. “One such call was a high-profile incident during which a two-year-old child drowned at Mission Bay Park.”
After that incident in March, Harris publicly alleged that a change in dispatch rules delayed a response to the drowning call by emergency workers.
Harris said Fennessy has pushed hard for firefighters to do water emergency rescues instead of lifeguards.
Harris contended that Fennessy’s motive was to inflate the fire department’s workload so he could hire more firefighters.
Harris said when he objected to Fennessy’s plan, he faced retaliation.
“Since December, there’s been three investigations brought against me and two of them have been cleared with no result and now there’s a third one pending,” Harris said.
He said he filed the lawsuit to stop the harassment and to get records crucial to the fire department’s investigation of him.
Harris alleged under Fennessy’s leadership, lifeguard morale and standards have slipped. KPBS reached out to Fennessy and his spokeswoman said the city does not comment on pending litigation.
