Bradley Contradicts Chief on Firehouse Rule for Blacks : Race relations: He says his Administration did not impose limits at stations. But he praises Manning for affirmative action steps.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley on Wednesday contradicted remarks made earlier this week by Fire Chief Donald O. Manning that a department policy limiting the number of blacks at firehouses was the brainchild of Bradley’s Administration.

But in his first public testimony since leaving office in 1993, the former mayor also praised the chief’s affirmative action policies.

“Donald Manning is the only fire chief I know who has had a serious commitment to affirmative action,” Bradley told members of the city Personnel Committee.

Bradley spoke at the latest in a series of highly charged public hearings--triggered by the release of a blistering city audit in November concluding that the Fire Department apparently had discriminated against women and minorities.

Like the other hearings, Wednesday’s was marked by emotional testimony from current and former department employees on both sides of the issue.

But the most surprising comments came from Bradley, who had not been expected to appear. He told council members that he was testifying in response to an article Tuesday in The Times. Among other things, the article quoted Manning as saying that the policy prohibiting more than one black firefighter per fire company was the Bradley Administration’s idea.

Many African American firefighters have said the policy has contributed to high attrition among blacks and to their failure to receive promotions. They have said that black firefighters had been isolated at stations with supervisors hostile to their advancement.

Bradley testified that he was not responsible for implementing the policy and was unaware that it existed.

“That was not an Administration policy,” the former mayor said. “That was not a Bradley policy.”

The policy was quietly rescinded when Mayor Richard Riordan took office in 1993.

Bradley praised Manning’s record of hiring women and minorities, saying he had done more to advance affirmative action goals than any other chief in the department’s history.

But the former mayor also has a personal stake in the debate. By lauding the chief, Bradley also is defending his own Administration--during which Manning was hired and many of the problems and complaints revealed in the audit began to develop.

Although he supported Manning’s entry-level hiring accomplishments, Bradley also agreed with the audit’s conclusion that not enough has been done to promote women and minorities into the department’s upper echelons.

The Personnel Department study found that 19 of the top 20 fire officials are white males and that, in some cases, women and minorities have been subjected to unfair evaluations by supervisors and harassed off the force. The audit also found that women and African American recruits have left the department at a rate of about twice that of whites.

“We still have a long way to go,” Bradley testified.

Manning did not attend the hearing. He was visiting two firefighters burned, neither seriously, battling a car fire Wednesday morning.

During the hearing, a former female fire recruit testified that fire officials failed to seriously investigate her claims that a male recruit threatened to rape her when she was at the training academy in 1986.

Instead, said Charise Sherratt, she was subjected to humiliating questions about sexual practices and made to take a polygraph test.

“I am telling the truth, and I think the city should clean house,” said Sherratt, who quit the academy and is now a firefighter with the Long Beach Fire Department.

In a sharp exchange, Battalion Chief Michael Perez said he is tired of such allegations against the department and asked Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas to publicly support Manning.

Ridley-Thomas declined, saying he is disturbed by inconsistent and hostile statements made by Manning and his top administrators.