A white Los Angeles Fire Department captain who is suing the city, alleging he was the victim of racial and gender discrimination after complaining that a Black arson investigator had left a loaded firearm in an unlocked department vehicle, wants access to any LAFD probe into the investigator’s conduct.
Capt. Brandon Taulli’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit also alleges retaliation and failure to prevent discrimination and retaliation. On Wednesday, Taulli’s attorneys filed court papers with Judge Daniel Murphy in advance of a Feb. 18 hearing requesting the investigative information as well as Afara Lalaind’s alleged filing of a false police report of theft against the plaintiff.
“As the captain, plaintiff was the commanding officer and highest ranking member of the LAFD at fire station 17,” Taulli’s lawyers state in their pleadings, adding that one of Taulli’s responsibilities was to assure the security of the fire station premises as well as the personnel.
Taulli’s lawyers further want all documents regarding any LAFD investigation into whether Lalaind refused to provide paramedic care to a patient based on the false claim a patient was deceased when that person was actually alive and later revived by paramedics.
Prior to July 2023, Fire Station 17 and other LAFD facilities were the sites of repeated thefts, including an attempt by a person to steal more than $1,000 in items from Station 17, Taulli’s lawyers state in their court papers. So in May 2022, the Central Operations Bureau ordered that plans be developed to increase security at every fire station, the plaintiff’s attorneys further state.
Taulli, 49, contends that while assigned to the station on Santa Fe Avenue southeast of downtown on July 11, 2023, he found an unlocked car with a loaded firearm inside during a routine premises check.
Taulli learned that Lalaind, now 40, had left the weapon in the vehicle and that she was a member and executive officer of the Stentorians, which the suit dubs an “activist organization whose stated agenda is the favoring in the treatment, recruiting, hiring and promoting of African-Americans within the LAFD.”
The suit filed in August 2024 further states that Taulli believes Lalaind also is a member or associated with Los Angeles Women in the Fire Service.
“The stated agenda of the Los Angeles Women in the Fire Service is to implement the LAFD’s affirmative action program disparately discriminating in favor of females in the recruitment, hiring and promotion of females,” according to the suit, which further alleges that the group has “extensive influence in regard to issues regarding the LAFD, including recruitment, promotional and disciplinary matters, and substantial access to and influence with the mayor, City Council and … (then-LAFD Fire Chief) Kristin Crowley.”
In his lawsuit, Taulli says he told the investigator that having an unlocked vehicle and unstored firearm in or near the station was “dangerous and against protocol” and that the captain summed up events in a report to a battalion commander.
However, since coming forward the arson investigator and the city have “harassed, discriminated against and retaliated” against Taulli by, among other things, making false and malicious statements accusing him of an illegal vehicle search, theft, blackmail, extortion, racism and sexism, according to the complaint.
The arson investigator’s gender as a female was a “substantial motivating reason for defendant city engaging in favoritism in favor of (the investigator),” the suit states.
Late that same month, Taulli was transferred to Fire Station 76 in Hollywood, which the suit states was an “adverse employment action” that has resulted in lost income and caused him emotional distress.
Taulli contends that Lalaind falsely claimed that he stole her purse and then attempted to blackmail her by stating that he would not report her alleged failure to secure the handgun in return for him keeping her handbag.