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Tempe, Arizona: Putting a Price Tag
on Bias
TEMPE (By Dennis Welch, Tribune) July 10, 2005 - In September 1982, Keith Archibald met the boss of the Tempe Public Works Department for the first time. He was interviewing for a job as a garbage truck driver, but the conversation focused little on that. The two men were talking about more pressing issues. The "Mexican problem" was growing, the boss said, and the boss feared for his safety.About halfway through the meeting, the boss, Frank Schinzel took out what looked like a large ballpoint pen. But at one end there was a large metal spike. "See this," Schinzel said, holding the weapon in his hand, "This is what I need to protect myself from the Mexicans here." Archibald listened as Schinzel described how he intended to straighten out the public works department. Schinzel said he had been trying to get rid of the Mexicans since he started working for the city in the late 1960s. They were lazy and "unappreciative," a constant disciplinary problem. There was talk that they were organizing a union to strike the city, and some of the Hispanic workers were threatening the supervisor. It was a strange interview and he felt his former boss was an equally strange man, Archibald would recall in a legal deposition in 2003, more than 20 years after their initial meeting. Archibald had agreed to testify on behalf of nine current and former Hispanic employees who had filed a discrimination suit against city. Archibald’s sworn deposition was just one document in a cabinet full of evidence that compelled a jury to award $2.4 million to the nine Hispanic workers late last month for decades of racism and discrimination. The verdict ended a sixweek trial. But the legal struggle had begun in February 1999, when three public works employees filed complaints with U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Three investigations followed — an internal city inquiry, one by the attorney general’s office and a third by private attorney Daniel Ortega. All concluded there was discrimination and a hostile work environment within public works. The men filed a federal lawsuit against the city in 2002. Schinzel did not testify at the trial, but in depositions and subsequent interviews, he denied the allegations made against him by Archibald and the plaintiffs. "Most of the people in this group were not stars, they were not the best workers and they were the first to complain," he told the Tribune in an interview last week. With one exception, "they were angry people." During his career at the city, Schinzel said he "bent over backwards for the Hispanics." But after allegations of racism began to surface in 1999, Schinzel was transferred to a different department and remained there, as security coordinator of the water department, until his retirement in January. Archibald never testified either. He died in 2004, less than a year after giving his deposition. The 55-year-old Archibald, who was white, had retired from the city in 2000. Overall, he said, the city treated him well. But the situation was very different for his Hispanic co-workers, he said. Depositions in the case as well as testimony at the trial and interviews with some of those involved in the lawsuit who worked for the city since the early 1980s, paint a dark picture of what it was like at the Tempe Public Works Department over much of the past 50 years. Archibald watched as racial tensions escalated to a potentially lethal level. Street sweepers, garbage truck drivers and other employees would bring knives, revolvers, and sawed-off shotguns to work. Workers said that Schinzel hired two men to protect him; Schinzel said the men were simply good workers. Physically, both men were imposing. Covered in tattoos, both resembled bodybuilders. The largest stood about 6-feet 3-inches tall, weighed about 250 pounds and wore his hair in a cropped Mohawk. He was known to carry a .357-caliber or 9mm Beretta handguns. His partner, about 3 inches shorter and weighing about 240 pounds, sported a shaved head and preferred a sawed-off shotgun. Together, they harassed Hispanic employees and others who resisted Schinzel’s policies. And by carrying guns, many believe they were responsible for igniting the department’s arms race. Soon there were more knives and more guns. According to the depositions of current and former employees, nearly everybody was packing weapons. Racism had a long tradition inside the department. For decades, work assignments and work crews had been divided along race and ethnicity. Over the years, the Hispanic and other minority crews were handed the worst assignments. They were forced to work nights and weekends. They worked in the summer heat, filling cracks in the streets, while their white colleagues were given jobs out of the sun. But it was one of the best jobs an uneducated minority worker could have. So they endured it. By the time Daniel Dominguez took a job with Mesa in November 1967, racial bias and segregated work crews were institutions at the Tempe department. Dominguez, who was awarded $260,000, remembers a man named Red — short for redneck. After working in the streets all day, Dominguez said Red was always waiting at the field services office to dish out a racial slur. "He would sit there and calls us all kinds of names while he picked tar out of his boots with a knife," Dominguez said during a recent interview. But the racial slurs were nothing. Dominguez kept a journal that he wanted to be used as evidence if he turned up dead. It was the mid-1980s and Dominguez had just blown the whistle on a supervisor who had landscaped his own house, using city equipment and employees. Shortly after that, he began receiving death threats. "People like you turn up floating in the water," one supervisor told him. Dominguez, who stands just over 6 feet tall, weighs nearly 300 pounds and always wears sunglasses because of a medical condition, said he would stay up late into the night documenting the harassment and the threats. At work, he carried a tape recorder and recorded hours of conversations. "I went through hell," he said. "I really thought they were going to kill me." On any given day, Hispanics were called a number of derogatory names. And hanging on the office wall of a departmental supervisor was an oil painting of a Nazi war criminal. To avoid racial abuse in the break room, the Hispanics segregated themselves. They converted an area known as the "Tool Room" into an alternative lunchroom. Inside, they had their own tables, their own silverware, their own freezer and their own microwave. "The room was very important to us because we felt comfortable there," said Randy Bologna, a former supervisor at public works and a plaintiff in the case. "But the room was open to everybody." Bologna, who is Hispanic, was fired in June 2000 for saying there were too many Hispanics on his crew. He had worked for the city since the early 1970s and said he was pushing to end racial segregation. He said he was complaining about segregated work crews, not the workers themselves. The jury awarded him $475,000 — more than any other plaintiff. Although the verdict ends the plaintiffs’ long fight with the city, the history of what happened at Tempe’s public works department continues to divide the community. Last year, the issue was in the forefront of two high-profile political campaigns — and it may well affect elections next year as well. During the intense and often bitter mayoral contest between Mayor Hugh Hallman and longtime City Councilman Dennis Cahill, many public works employees who felt discriminated against supported Hallman. It was Hallman, then a councilman, who personally investigated the public works department in the late 1990s to uncover racist and discriminatory behavior. During many debates, campaign stops and council meetings, his supporters were easily identified by their distinctive bright red shirts. Many of those concerned about the treatment of Hispanic workers, accused Cahill of turning a "blind eye" toracism and discrimination at thepublic works department. During a January 2004 interview with the Tribune, Cahill said he knew racism had existed in the public works department since he moved to Tempe in the 1950s. "But knowing about something your friends tell you about and proving it are two different things," Cahill said during that interview. Meanwhile, during last year’s District 17 state Senate race, Jesse Hernandez, a longtime Tempe resident, ran against incumbent Democratic Sen. Harry Mitchell, a Tempe political icon and its former mayor. Hernandez accused Mitchell of ignoring what was happening at the public works department while Mitchell was mayor from 1978 to 1994. Mitchell denied the accusations. "I was trying to hold people accountable who were in leadership positions at the time," Hernandez said. Now, Hernandez, who surprised many by capturing about 40 percent of the vote, has announced that he will run for one of the three council seats open in 2006. Many of Hallman’s supporters voted for Hernandez in the state election; he’s counting on their support again. Hernandez has called for a public apology to the Hispanics who suffered in the public works department. At last week’s council meeting, Hallman said the city’s insurance carrier has advised officials against commenting on the lawsuit or the verdict. What happened at the public works department has deeply divided the community and illustrates how race and politics break along the same lines in Tempe, Hernandez said. "Politically, it’s now the good ol’ boys versus the new community of this town," he said. Plaintiffs’ awards Pedro Amaya: $250,000 Randy Bologna: $475,000 Jose Corrales: $210,000 Daniel Dominquez: $260,000 Edward Fernandez: $250,000 Reuben Figueroa: $280,000 Armondo Gonzalez: $175,000 Manuel Navarro: $350,000 Raul Trevino: $175,000 Contact Dennis Welch by email, or phone (480) 898-6573 |
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