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Photo: Motor City Muckraker
Robert Pattison, a probationary Detroit firefighter terminated for delivering a watermelon wrapped in a pink bow to a predominately black fire station as “a welcome gift” has filed a lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court against the city, Steve Neavling of Motor City Muckraker reports.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this month, claims he was racially discriminated against because the Detroit Fire Department “would never have discharged a black employee for gifting a watermelon.”
The department fired Pattison on Oct. 5 after the watermelon “was deemed offensive and racially insensitive.” Most of Detroit’s white firefighters defended the firing, and the firefighters’ union declined to take up Pattison’s case, Neavling reports.
