A former patrol officer on the Sea Gate police department – a tiny force serving the private, largely Orthodox Jewish community on Coney Island – has filed a federal racial discrimination suit.
Christopher Simmons, who is black, says his problem began when he was performing crowd control duties during a building fire in the gated community on April 15, 2009.
Simmons says that after he kept the president of the Sea Gate Association from crossing a police line intended to keep bystanders out of danger, the angry official called him a “Schwartze” – a German or Yiddish word meaning “black” and used derogatorily.
Following that incident, Simmons claims that he became the target of a series of complaints within the police department.
He was reprimanded for sleeping in his patrol car on two separate occasions, charged with insubordination after failing to lock a file cabinet, and accused of accessing computer information without authorization.
He claims that he was targeted for racial reasons after making a complaint about his mistreatment to the New York state Division of Human Rights.
Eventually he was fired by the police force in early 2011.
Simmons’s suit in Brooklyn federal court names the Sea Gate Association in Brooklyn and seeks unspecified damages.
Jeffrey Fortunato, Sea Gate’s police chief, said he conducted an internal probe into the fire scene incident and established that other nearby officers did not hear any racists remarks.
“Two were in earshot and heard nothing,” Fortunato said.
The chief noted that minorities comprise about 75 percent of Sea Gate’s police ranks and that Simmons’ problems had nothing to do with bigotry.
“He was written up by numerous supervisors for serious violations,” the chief said.
mmaddux@nypost.com