Wilson wasn't happy with the outcome, especially when things continued to get worse in the office. After Pierre received Wilson's complaint about the knife, he proceeded to pull it out again during a meeting with Wilson and Ingram. Pierre still had not reinstated her 10 percent raise, which she stopped receiving in mid-August, after Pierre confronted her about the database. When Ingram and Wilson both wanted Christmas and New Year's off, he gave Ingram Christmas and Wilson New Year's, although department rules should have given Wilson the vacation she wanted, because she had a higher rank and seniority.
But the last straw came in November 1998. An interview committee had rejected an applicant whom the personnel office had sent for an interview because an arson investigator on the committee suspected he might be an arsonist. The thought had crossed Wilson's mind when she was processing his application -- he had been to an awful lot of fires, even for a volunteer firefighter, she explained. But he met all the other criteria, and she thought it was going beyond her job description to keep him from the interview process.
Mark Graham
Sherrie Wilson has been on medical leave for several months after a stressful year of fighting a boss she believed was trying to undermine her.
It was big news -- in the Dallas Times Herald and elsewhere around the country -- when Sherrie (Clark) Wilson became Dallas' first female firefighter.
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Pierre screamed at Wilson for not screening the candidate better. Wilson had had enough and told Pierre she was tired of him being "such a jerk," she recalls. Then he told her he would be happy to write a letter for her to be transferred. She told him she wasn't interested in giving up her acting captain's pay (the 10 percent raise he had stopped giving her in mid-August) because he wanted to get rid of her.
"It you want captain's pay, you have to start acting like a captain," he replied.
Wilson filed a grievance, claiming they had not properly investigated her prior claims and adding several more complaints. The department moved her to the training academy, which shares the same grounds as the personnel office, and reduced her pay level to that of acting lieutenant. On several occasions, Wilson felt Pierre was harassing her by standing outside the building for 15 and 30 minutes at a time watching her. When she complained to her supervisor, it stopped. Wilson and other training officers typically sit in on some of the classes the rookies attend. One of the classes Wilson sat in on in the spring was on sexual harassment. Ingram happened to walk into the class to speak to the instructor. A few minutes later, her supervisor pulled Wilson out of the class, because Pierre told him she was being disruptive. At her wit's end, Wilson told her supervisor she was thinking of filing a workman's compensation claim for stress.
During the grievance process, the department once again found that Pierre had not discriminated against her. She filed a complaint with the civil service board. Pierre changed his story three times in explaining why he didn't pay Wilson accurately. Although he had signed the form that gave her the additional pay for the first month she was on the job, he told the civil service commission that he thought she would get it automatically. He then said that when he had his staff change from five eight-hour days to four 12-hour days, he thought it would automatically trigger the extra pay. He also said it was just an innocent mistake.
(A few months later, in the course of doing an open-records request, Wilson discovered that Pierre had never missed paying Ingram his temporary-assignment pay when he served as acting captain in the months before she worked there. When Wilson returned to the department several months ago in an attempt, under the open-records act, to retrieve the database she had compiled, a black officer had replaced her as an acting captain. Taped to his computer was a note written by Pierre: "Glad to see a brother on board.")
Civil service did not find that Pierre had discriminated against Wilson because of her race or gender. But during the hearing deliberations, which were open to the public at Wilson's request, members of the board said they were troubled by what they had heard, according to a partial transcript.
Several board members said that Pierre had intimidated Wilson with the knife, that she had been "set up," and that there was a "tilt against her" in the department. "It is obviously a troubled little group," said the board chair.
Wilson is now pursuing her case with the EEOC and plans to return to the department, but she knows it will be tough. She finally received the captain's pay she was owed, but her rank was reduced to its original level. She also must return the acting lieutenant's pay she received while on leave.
"I love the department, and I plan on staying a long time," Wilson says. "But I'm a fighter. I've been injured in fires. I've had knives pulled on me in the back of ambulances. I've had guys not like me. I dealt with all of it. It was part of the job. But what happened to me when I went to recruiting was just something I couldn't deal with. I was made to look like a problem child, and that's bullshit. It was unfair, and it was ugly. I really believe it was all about power and race."
