Douglas L. Barry is Appointed New Acting Chief of Los Angeles Fire Department

LOS ANGELES, CA (CNS)  -- Douglas L. Barry was appointed acting chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department , making him the first African American chief of a department under fire for alleged biases within its ranks toward women and minorities.

The 31-year department veteran will assume his new duties January 1, taking over from Chief William Bamattre, who resigned last week after becoming the focal point of a controversy stemming from a African American firefighter's claim that he was a victim of racism when colleagues laced his spaghetti with dog food at a Westchester fire station as a prank in 2004.

''I have agreed to serve as an interim, but my aim is to make permanent results,'' Barry said during a news conference at Fire Station No. 66, the site of his last field posting.

''I know that we can stop hazing and horseplay, I know that we can address the department's history of discrimination and exclusion, I know that we can build a department that looks like Los Angeles,'' he said. ''And I firmly believe that we need to foster a culture of accountability at every level, including me, the fire chief.''

Barry, 53, joined the department in 1975, working his way up the ranks as firefighter, engineer, battalion chief, chief of staff and assistant chief.

He could remain in the job for a year while a national search for a chief is under way, but Barry said he does not want the post full-time.

''Douglas Barry is truly a man for the hour,'' Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said while announcing the appointment this morning. ''He has the precise qualities we need to guide this department through the interim. Chief Barry is a born leader, a consummate professional. As interim chief, he'll bring intensity, intelligence and integrity.''

As word of his impending appointment circulated yesterday, colleagues and city officials praised Barry, a Rancho Palos Verdes resident who was born and raised in the South Bay and attended Narbonne High School, Los Angeles Harbor College and Cal State Long Beach. He is married, with three children.

Bamattre, hired in 1996 to reform a department rife with discrimination lawsuits, resigned at the behest of the mayor amid a controversy involving a $2.7 million legal settlement to former firefighter Tennie Pierce, who sued the city alleging racial discrimination after the dog food incident.

Villaraigosa, raising the ire of several African American community activists, vetoed the settlement after a video came to light showing Pierce involved in hazing other firefighters, and the City Council let the veto stand. The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial March 19.

Other firefighters have also claimed discrimination, and a report by city Controller Laura Chick documented other complaints of hazing.

A black community activist said yesterday that appointing a black fire chief will not improve conditions at the fire department unless city leaders give him their full backing.

''Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's appointment of Douglas L. Barry alone won't end the culture of discrimination, harassment and hazing in the L.A. City Fire Department,'' Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, said in a statement.

''If the mayor, City Council and commission don't provide the firm leadership, support and management tools that Barry needs to revamp the department, his appointment will be an empty PR gesture done solely to appease the black community,'' he said.

The food incident brought new focus on what critics decry as a long- standing pattern of misbehavior, ranging from the juvenile to the criminal and including hazing, inappropriate sexual contact, and discrimination.

Villaraigosa said last Friday that he wanted a ''change agent'' to fill Bamattre's shoes.

''He's a people person who has a sense of what is really going on and what's true and not true,'' Steve Tufts, incoming president of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, told the Daily News.

''He knows that 99 percent of the firefighters who come to work want to do a great job and are proud of what they do. There are just a couple who have created this problem for us.''

Capt. Armando Hogan, president of the Stentorians, which is the African American Firefighters Association, told The Times his group is ''extremely happy... This gives us a chance to move forward and work toward changing a culture of unprofessional, condescending and disrespectful behavior."

Barry also received praise from peers and superiors.

``I am very impressed with his ... thoughtfulness. He operates on a very even keel,'' Fire Commissioner Genethia Hudley-Hayes told The Times.

John Miller, president of the Chief Officers Association of command- level personnel in the LAFD, said Barry would help stabilize the department.

``We think he's the right man for the job at this time,'' Miller told the Daily News. ``He has the respect of everyone in the department, and if anyone can help deal with the state of turmoil we are in now, it is Doug Barry.''