Sure, the city promoted William Bamattre to fire chief eleven years ago hoping he would clean up the station house culture of abusing women and minorities that kept raising its ugly head. He didn't, and now appears to be leaving shortly. The complaints have been about more than hazing and innocent pranks, but Larry Harnisch at the 1947 Project found that practical jokes go back a long way at the LAFD. He posts a newspaper story from 1907 about a trick pulled at a Sunset Boulevard station.