2 DWP WORKERS FILE SUIT LAWSUIT CLAIMS DISCRIMINATION.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard Staff Writer

Two Department of Water and Power employees have filed a discrimination lawsuit accusing the DWP of racial harassment and providing poorer equipment and service to African-American neighborhoods.

The suit, expected to be announced today, also claims that the City Attorney's Office, which is supposed to investigate discrimination claims, instead collaborated with the DWP to cover them up.

``My experience in dealing with the Department of Water and Power is that it's a racist organization,'' said Michael P. King, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

DWP general manager S. David Freeman, on leave since Jan. 1 to run for a 41st Assembly District seat, said he has not reviewed the lawsuit, but denied that the DWP provides lesser service to African-American neighborhoods.

``We keep the lights on all over town,'' Freeman said. ``I don't think there is any credible evidence that reliability of electrical power and water is any different in one section of the city than the others.''

An attorney for the DWP denied the allegations in the lawsuit and said the DWP's Equal Employment Opportunity Section appropriately handles any complaints of discrimination or harassment.

``It's a big department, and I'm sure on occasion there have been people that have done things that had racial overtones, but they have a system set up to address that,'' said David Lawrence, a Pasadena attorney who was hired as outside counsel for the DWP because the City Attorney's Office is named in the suit. ``To suggest it's a departmentwide systemic problem is not accurate.''

The suit was filed in December in Los Angeles Superior Court, but attorneys said they delayed a formal announcement until all parties were served. The suit does not specify the amount of monetary damages being sought, but the plaintiffs' attorneys said they will seek millions of dollars.

According to the suit, one plaintiff, Kenneth M. Carter, 41, a Riverside County resident and DWP employee since 1983, was ``instructed by his supervisors that there would be no repair of street lights `south of Slauson' after dark, because the area was too dangerous. This represented a blanket, inaccurate stereotyping of an entire African-American neighborhood.''

Slauson Avenue runs through a number of African-American neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles.

Carter is white. The other plaintiff, Augustine J. Serna, 44, of Los Angeles County, a DWP employee since 1990, is Latino.

Both claim they were harassed by coworkers and supervisors because they are married to African-American women, and because they provided information in an internal discrimination complaint brought by an African-American coworker.

The lawsuit also claims that rather than investigating claims of racial harassment, city attorneys used the process to gather information that could be used to shield the city against a lawsuit.