For the Los Angeles County Fire Department, it’s a clear red line: Firefighters can’t beat neighbors.

That's why the department fired longtime Santa Clarita Fire Chief Adam Clint, whose crisis dispute with a man under several doors led him to land in felony assault.

"You got involved in the conduct of a fire chief by assaulting a neighbor and being found felony," Deputy Fire Chief Thomas Ewald wrote in a termination letter in January 2023. "Your misconduct embarrassment and discreditation of the department."

But the fire department may have to retrieve Clint soon.

In February, the Los Angeles County Civil Service Commission unanimously voted for Clint, 51, and awarded him more than two years of return salary.

The commissioner found that there was not enough evidence to support the charge that Clint called his neighbor, who was black, was N-word, and waved his gun and knocked him to the ground. They also found that Clint was subjected to "positive" behavior and "threatening" words from neighbor Robert Pope.

"His misconduct on July 3, 2021 is an isolation, atypical verdict error in repeated judgments," the committee's hearing officer wrote in his report.

The fire department is filing the decision, filed a petition in the Los Angeles County Superior Court on April 14, stating that the firing of Clint is "within all the discretion of the department." It is not clear that Clint will be allocated to the department when he returns home for $295,000 (including benefits from the year of the attack).

Clint's attorney Steve Haney said his client felt very regretful for hitting the pope but denied that he had ever accused the gun or called him racial slander. A judge reduced Clint's felony assault on misdemeanors and later removed from his record.

"This guy has no bones of racism," Hanney said, questioning why the county is spending money on external lawyers to get Clint out of work. “It’s a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Records show that over the past four years, the Civil Service Commission has forced department heads to recapture dozens of workers, including sheriff’s representatives, probation officers and social workers, causing millions of dollars in return to pay.

According to review of the committee's minutes and annual reports, approximately 65 employees of the committee have resumed recovery in 2021 since 2021.

The committee consists of five members, each appointed by a director in Los Angeles County who serve at $150 per meeting.

The city of Los Angeles has similar committees, as well as the Human Rights Commission for Police Discipline. The union representing officials from the Los Angeles Police Department has successfully promoted a vote measure that allows more civilians to be on the Human Rights Subcommittee, a study that shows that civilians are often more tolerant than other police officers.

County Civil Service Commission Chairman John Donner said he and his colleagues usually agree to discipline decisions from various departments. He described the relationship between the county department and the committee as “very civil.” In 2023, the Commission has approximately three-thirds of the four discipline decisions.

After Jim McDonnell became sheriff in 2014, he began prosecuting the recovery of a delegate who challenged the committee's dismissal for lying, saying he didn't know where to assign a delegate who lacked credibility to testify in court.

Court records show that Robert Luna, who has served as sheriff since 2022, has not filed any petitions to challenge the committee’s decision on his representatives.

Probation Commissioner Guillermo Viera Rosa had fought in court to overturn two committee rulings.

One involved an employee who was fired in 2021 for buying lobster lunches for minors who were not on the case and repeatedly visiting incarcerated gang members without approval. The judge ordered the committee to reconsider the decision in April. In another case, a deputy was fired in 2019 after a videotape showed him lying that he had beaten him.

In 2022, the committee brought back Hellen Carter, the chief of the probation bureau, in part because he was a psychiatrist, coroner, a professional bass fisherman, a trauma surgeon, an Olympic swimmer, a acrobatic pilot and an acrobatic pilot and an Army Vet who lost 70% of the sound of the bomb explosion in Afghanisist. The committee found that the decision to fire her was based on “false and unreliable allegations.”

The probation department prosecuted her to prevent her from returning to her original state, calling her "disease and responsibility" and that her behavior was "shocking and lasting (not weird). The department lost.

Carter did not respond to the email. When she returned to the county in 2024, she collected more than $5 million in backpacks, according to salary records.

Neighbors spit out of control almost immediately.

On July 3, 2021, the pope's wife called him and said Clint had just condemned her speeding on their Santa Clarita Cul-De-Sac.

The pope said he stopped at Clint's house and the two were caught in a heated argument at the door, eventually yelling at him with the captain pointing at the gun, "Let me get rid of my property" with racial slander.

The pope said Clint walked into his house and reappeared with a gun. The pope said that when the pope retreated to his car and his two 14-year-old stepdaughters were waiting, Clint knocked him down from behind and placed him on the ground until he regained consciousness. He said he later found bruises in footprints on his back.

Clint initially denied that the sheriff's deputies had hit the pope, but later admitted to slamming him into the head.

After a statement to the delegates that morning, the Pope arrived at his sister's funeral, who was supposed to be a pallbearer, just as everyone left.

Tensions between Clint and the Pope's family worsened. In 2022, Clint sued the Pope and his wife Rozanna Avetyan and La County, believing that sheriff’s representatives and fire officials were supported by “his African-American descent.” Clint also claimed in the lawsuit that he had not received due process “apparently due to his Caucasian race.” The case was dismissed.

A year later, the Pope sued. The case is underway.

The pope and his wife said that since that day, the family has been trying to keep going, becoming so reluctant to leave the house that they sent the dogs away, so they didn't have to meet Clint on a walk. They finally decided to leave.

"I just don't understand how he resumed work," the pope said. "It's really shocking."