Hiding in Plain Sight: Killing the messenger?

Installment in an occasional series



"Male deputies openly bragging about driving women out of the department, male deputies boasting about turning their backs on domestic violence victims, unrelenting retaliation against female deputies who report harassment, department protection and promotion of the perpetrators, spiteful, anti-women, written policies, failures to back up female deputy calls for help, unwanted kissing and intimacies from male deputies.............."




This description is from the Women's Justice Center (Centro de Justicia Para Mujeres and it was written about the Sonoma County Sheriff's Department in 2005.

Female officers make up about 6% of those in the department, one which has already paid out over $1 million in damages for sexual harassment claims filed in most cases by female officers. The department has resisted multiple investigations by multiple outside agencies from the United States Department of Justice to the county grand jury and just about everything in between, with its sexist and misogynist culture intact.

Is this police department unique? Hardly.


Michelle Zanes wouldn't think so. She was an officer with Atlantic City Police Department in New Jersey who filed a sexual harassment lawsuit in 2006.



(excerpt, The Press)


Beginning in January 2000 and continuing through 2002, Sgt. Anthony Pherribo allegedly harassed Zanes because of her gender. He allegedly singled her out and in one instance “spooned her” by rubbing against her from behind and also did other improper, sexually offensive acts to the plaintiff, the lawsuit reads. Pherribo was characterized in the lawsuit as engaging in “a pattern of sexual harassment.”

The lawsuit lists other officers who are accused of harassing the female officer. Zanes said one member of the department followed her home from a police event and tried to kiss her. Another allegedly became angry when she would not sleep with him and yelled at her. In one incident, an officer took a banana off Zane's desk and shoved it in her mouth while co-workers snickered, the lawsuit reads.



The police department claimed to be shocked when Zanes filed her lawsuit. Why? Because she didn't tell the department's Internal Affairs division about her allegations first.


(excerpt, The Press)



“There are policies and procedures within the Police Department to report sexual harassment and other violations if someone feels they have been victimized,” Baldwin said. “Ms. Zanes made one allegation a number of years ago which was fully investigated. She never made any other allegations until she filed this lawsuit. She knows of the process to report violations, but she chose not to use it, which calls into question whether these other incidents ever occurred.”



Perhaps, but another possibility is that Zanes tried the complaint process and it failed her. Because "fully investigated" is how the department interprets its investigations even though in many cases, this isn't what actually happens. Perhaps the next time around, Zanes felt like trying her luck in the courts. Maybe that sexual harassment reporting policy which most workplaces including presumably law enforcement agencies display on their walls is just a piece of paper with words on it. Words, without power. At least not as much power as the words used against women. And often enough, when women do try to complain about sexual harassment, those words are used against them, the actions aren't taken against the harasser but against them.

Just ask former Riverside Police Department officer-for-a-day Kelsy Metzler. She filed a sexual harassment complaint with her supervisors at the Ben Clark Training Academy in Riverside County. She allegedly never was able to even see a copy of her complaint and any attempts to get a progress report on the academy's investigation of her allegations was met with rude evasiveness, except for the day she alleged in her lawsuit that two Riverside Police Department officers from its personnel and training division encountered her at the academy and informed her about how unhappy the department was about her and her sexual harassment complaint.

Did Metzler "wash out" of the academy? Did she not graduate? Did she fail her academy training and told not even to report on the first day of her new job to receive an assignment? According to her lawsuit, she graduated in the top-third of her academy class.

But Metzler never received her work assignment when she reported for work as one of the police department's newest officers. She was shown the door. The state laws which protect the privacy of police officers most particularly the naughty ones may have been protecting her if she did engage in misconduct serious enough to get fired the first day of reporting to work. However, they might also be protecting the department and the academy if the truth is there was no misconduct and she was fired for some other reason, especially if it was related to her filing a sexual harassment complaint at the academy.

There's a very good reason why the only people who sign on in opposition to sunshine bills in the state legislation like Gloria Romero's 1019 which passed 22 to 11 are law enforcement political organizations. A similar bill never made it out of the state assembly committee where it faced massive resistance from law enforcement unions and police chief associations.

Metzler's sudden firing is hard to ignore and because of the state's privacy laws, it will never be known if her firing had anything to do with actual misconduct or was a form of retaliation for her complaint. And does the police department sigh in dismay at this reality or does it instead breathe a sigh of relief that a potential problem is gone? And if it's the latter, what does that say about the climate in the police department regarding how its female officers are treated?


The attrition rate of female officers in the Riverside Police Department has always been difficult not to notice even as the hiring rates for women have been increasing. It's lost women at the pre-academy level, the academy level, in the ranks and even in some cases, more senior officers including three who do not appear included among the list of officers applauded in Chief Russ Leach's 2007 annual report.


Responses to questions about the high attrition rate are met with statements that those who drop out at the pre-academy shouldn't be included in any evaluation of any attrition rate, let alone included in examining any retention issues impacting female officers in the police department. There was some mention of telling several female recruitment officers in the department to better explain the "realities" of the job to the female officers because the reason female officers are dropping out, is because they don't understand these realities. But maybe that's not the case at all. Maybe they're dropping out like they are in other law enforcement agencies not because they don't understand the realities of policing, but because they do.


Because when women talk about their experiences with sexual harassment in police departments, a common theme is not that they didn't know the realities of policing as a challenging often dangerous profession, but that they didn't know that the realities of policing including quid pro quo sexual harassment, a working environment that was hostile to women as well as men of color and that any attempts they made to use the same policies that the department had assured were there to protect them, the only employees to be "investigated" or punished were them. This isn't a small group of women who have faced this, even though at the time maybe many of these women felt like they were the only ones. If it's happened to you, the experts say, look around and if you see a woman, it might have happened to her too.


It's too bad that in many instances the departments seem more intent on killing the messengers than in addressing serious issues and problems like this one. But until the cultures that exist inside departments along with the focus on keeping any potential risks to civic liability quiet, nothing will change. Many women who face sexual harassment and many men and women who face racial harassment in the workplace have no place to turn to internally because each and every mechanism including investigative processes and often including law enforcement unions which tend to be mostly White and mostly male works against them by design if not always by intent.


In the case of Officer Roger Sutton, who is Black, that was the case as well. According to his trial testimony, his civil depositions and his lawsuit against the department, he felt that the department's Internal Affairs Division was more intent on investigating him than in those who had mistreated him in the workplace. Keers experienced similar treatment when she filed her complaints about the hostile work environment for women and sexual discrimination in the department's promotion process. Metzler stated in her lawsuit that Internal Affairs representatives were present when she received her notice with intent to terminate on that first day of work. When she told them she couldn't appeal her firing if she didn't know what the allegations were, they allegedly told her, they didn't need to tell her and they didn't like her.

In the case of Sutton, what was interesting is that one of the sergeants who was assigned by the Internal Affairs Division to investigate his claims of racial discrimination and a hostile work environment later went on to file his own lawsuit alleging that yes racial discrimination existed, but White officers were its victims. If his lawsuit was germinating as an idea in his mind at the time of his involvement in the investigation on Sutton's behalf or against him (depending on how you look at it), then could that possibly impact the process?

But when it comes to filing sexual harassment complaints or lawsuits, getting fired is always one of the risks that is faced. Complaining about sexism and sexual harassment in the Riverside Police Department once resulted in a female officer, Christine Keers, not only being fired but facing criminal prosecution. The city paid off a huge settlement to make her lawsuit go away, but in a note of irony, still has one of its defendants, former officer Ron Adams, in its employment at City Hall. His brother is of course, current Councilman Steve Adams.

Other female officers at different agencies have also faced termination from their jobs.


Anjanette L. Quinn who worked for Evans Police Department sued her agency for sexual harassment but not long after that, she was fired. That's not uncommon with women who file sexual harassment complaints or lawsuits. Her allegations included the following.


(excerpt, Greeley Tribune)


* She was told continuously that to be trusted in the department, she and other female employees had to accept sexually explicit conduct, including sexual talk and computer messages.

* She applied for a sergeant's position in 2006 but was told by an administrator that the department was "not ready for a female sergeant."

* Some command staff members and other officers asked her to watch pornographic videos on their department computers.

* She said she was asked by a command staff member to engage in oral sex with him, and he also "repeatedly asked her what her favorite sexual positions, sexual toys were ..."

* Quinn stated in the lawsuit that an Evans police sergeant aimed an infrared camera at her and said he was able to see her breasts and vaginal area.




There are many cases of sexual discrimination and harassment of female law enforcement officers inside agencies from coast to coast and from other countries in the world as well. They have been successful in many cases when they sue, costing the cities and counties which oversee the respective law enforcement agencies a lot of money. Still, even in cities and counties with huge payouts, very little actually changes inside those agencies. Almost as if even a payout over a million dollars (never mind the litigation expenses) is still not as important an issue as maintaining the masculine culture that still pervades and often defines law enforcement agencies.




Are female police chiefs still a novelty? This article doesn't seem to think so. Nationwide, women make up 14% of all police officers and 1% of all police chiefs. It can still be a difficult road and a difficult climb up the ladder, through the glass ceiling. But even women in the highest ranks of law enforcement share their harassment stories.


(excerpt, New York Times)


“It definitely became more difficult as I climbed the ranks,” said Chief Baldoni, 52. “I remember having to deal with a lot of rumors about me. You can become targeted as a woman.”

Chief Baldoni recalls early in her career when the police chief ordered that some inappropriate posters come down from the walls of the gym. A rumor spread that she had asked that they be taken down.

It got nasty. Inappropriate materials were slipped into her mail slot, and someone wrote some malicious graffiti about her on the wall of the gym. She bravely filed a complaint with the chief.



Someone actually detailed this incident where a male officer had sexually harassed a female officer by saying that he didn't want a woman to respond to his call, to dispatch a male officer and to send the female officer back to play with "her bag of toys" which were actually sex toys confiscated during a raid of an adult shop. A complaint was filed and letters were sent to the department complaining not about the conduct of the male officer towards the female officer but actually about the complaint itself. The excuse given was that the female officer should know what to expect because she was working in a "male dominated" environment. The letter writer asked if these individuals even understood what sexual harassment entailed.


Is this kind of behavior ever excusable? No, but it's often excused.

The answer to that question is yes even when departments say no. It's yes each time a sexist joke is told and those who tell it are never called on it. It's yes when sexist banter is as part of the fabric of a police agency as its It's yes, when male officers in positions of power are allowed to coerce or pressure female officers into having to choose between having sex with them and remaining police officers or refusing and kissing their hard work and their careers goodbye. It's yes, when departments allow or even encourage male officers to show porno films to "celebrate" their promotions in the workplace. It's yes, when if women complain, they are the ones who are punished for doing so and have to throw their entire careers away in the fight for a better working environment free of sexual harassment.


So is this kind of behavior ever excusable? The answer should be no, but until the answer to the question of whether or not it's excused is also no, so will it be.

An interesting study done on women in policing including a detailed history is here.



As always, here's the resources if you're facing sexual harassment:



National Center for Women and Policing


Penny Harrington


EEOC


Department of Fair Employment and Housing


Fair Employment and Housing Commission



Feminist Majority




Press Enterprise Columnist Dan Bernstein writes about quakes, pollution and the race to succeed retiring Riverside County CEO Larry Parrish.


(excerpt)


Successors to retiring RivCo Chief Exec Larry Parrish:

Prince Charles, 20-1. Has, Parrish notes, pined for a dream job even longer than archrival Riverside City Manager Brad Hudson. Desire to work from home could hurt his chances.

Hudson 7-1. An exec packing a concealed weapon could stand up to DA Rod Pacheco.

DA Rod Pacheco, 50-1. Already runs county.





Riverside Police Department's online reporting is up and running.




The three New York City Police Department officers are expected to walk or be acquitted by the judge hearing the case. That outcome will surprise few people as well the reality that the scenario that played out in Bell just as it did in the 1999fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo is likely to happen in some form again.