A Black firefighter filed a federal lawsuit alleging that a New Jersey fire department where he works failed to intervene and take immediate action after he suffered heinous racist harassment from one of his colleagues.

In the $25 million complaint filed by Patrick Thomas, he alleges that the Bloomfield Fire Department never took steps to protect him from or discipline a white firefighter who repeatedly racially discriminated against him.

According to the suit, per Fire Law Blog, Bloomfield firefighter Walter Coffey made verbal and physical references about hanging nooses to Thomas on two separate occasions.

The complaint alleges that even before those incidents, Coffey had used the N-word on numerous occasions “in the presence of African American members of the BFD to harass, intimidat

See Full Page