Oakland Fire Dept. conditionally offered job to sex offender

OAKLAND, Calif. (KTVU) - Stephen Eldridge, 49, of Oakland thought he had finally achieved his goal of becoming a firefighter when the city recently gave him a conditional offer of employment.

"There was an excitement that came from him. He felt like he was going to be part of the brotherhood, quote unquote, is one of the phrases that I heard he used," said Darin White, an Oakland Fire Department deputy chief.

But Eldridge is a registered sex offender because of a decades-old rape conviction, and it wasn't until this month that city officials took back their offer for him to begin training.

According to court records obtained by KTVU Fox 2, officials say Eldridge has been stalking firefighters, and has engaged in "increasingly erratic, threatening and violent behavior at various OFD personnel."

The records say on Jan. 4, Eldridge showed up in a "excited state" at Fire Station 18 at 50th and Bancroft avenues in East Oakland.

A video of the incident, taken by a firefighter, shows Eldridge arriving on a bicycle and running and stomping oddly.

"You think I'm on drugs?" he is heard on the video. "I haven't slept in two weeks."

The next day, he pretended to have been stabbed in the neck, officials say. When firefighters opened the door, he became violent and began swinging at firefighters, cursing at them and kicking at the station door.

"He's smashing at the apparatus door," an Oakland police dispatcher told officers after sending them to the fire station. "Can I get some other units to start over that way please?"

After police took him to John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro for an emergency psychiatric evaluation, Eldridge even called another fire station from the hospital to ask firefighters to support his efforts to be hired, officials say.

The city obtained a temporary restraining order against him on Friday.

Eldridge presented himself well during an oral board interview with Fire Chief Teresa Deloach-Reed.

"The individual is very studious and composed at times, but then on other instances he's very erratic and very altered, if you will," White said.

In 1991, Eldridge was sentenced to three years in state prison for rape.  It wasn't until later that the department learned that Eldridge was a registered sex offender as a result of that case.

Officials say background checks aren't done until later in the process, because it would be too expensive to automatically do that for everyone who applies.

"To my knowledge, this is a very rare occurrence so, as a result of that, I don't know that we need to change our entire process behind an isolated incident," White said.

But rank-and-file firefighters say this incident casts a negative light on the department's hiring process.

"Well, I think the members are a little bit amused, but they're kind of annoyed as well," said Dan Robertson, president of the Oakland firefighters union. "We would hope that our administration would have done a better job vetting potential applicants or who they give conditional offers to."