Woman Deputy Sticks to Her Guns and Wins

More than a few co-workers called her names, the kind of obscene names that told her how much she had offended the brotherhood of the badge by daring to question its tenets. And when the name-calling stopped, the silent treatment began.

Branded as a troublemaker, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Susan Bouman Perez was transferred from one dull assignment to the next.

“You would have thought that I had leprosy or something,” she recalled. “It doesn’t matter now, though; I’m just ecstatic.”

Seven years after Perez filed a class-action civil rights suit accusing the Sheriff’s Department of discriminating against her and other female deputies, a federal judge last week agreed, concluding that women in the department have been routinely denied equal opportunity when seeking promotion to the rank of sergeant.

Judge Robert M. Takasugi indicated that he plans to order more equitable promotion procedures for female deputies--an action that could ultimately increase the number of women in supervisory ranks throughout the department.

Takasugi concurred with Perez’s argument that female deputies seeking rank face a promotion system that has traditionally given the competitive edge to male deputies who have worked so-called “he-man” assignments--those that are particularly dangerous or prestigious. Women have generally been denied those positions, Perez contended.

Accordingly, Takasugi ruled that Perez, 38, should have been promoted to sergeant after first taking the sergeant’s test in 1975, and he awarded her about $60,000 in back pay plus interest. Perez took the sergeant’s examination again in 1980 after the earlier promotions list had expired, but continued to press her discrimination lawsuit despite winning her stripes the following year.

Last week, it was not so much Takasugi’s award of back pay as a sense of vindication that made Perez smile.

“A lot of people told me that this is the way things are in this department and that you’re not going to change them,” said Perez, a field supervisor who patrols the Pico Rivera area of southeast Los Angeles County and is married to another deputy. “I thought I should at least try.”

Sheriff’s Department administrators declined to comment on her case, other than to say that they plan to appeal it.

There are 741 women in the 6,700-member department, which patrols the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County as well as 36 contract cities. Women account for 12.8% of the 5,230 deputies and deputy trainees, but their numbers decline proportionately as their rank increases in the department.

Sheriff’s statistics show that of the department’s 788 sergeants, only 53 or 6.3% are women. Among 263 lieutenants, 13 or 4.9% are women. Two of 54 captains are females--a rate of 3.7%. None of the department’s other 32 top administrative positions are filled by women.

Still, sheriff’s officials have said that the department is committed to equal opportunity for women, and that it actively recruits qualified female candidates. However, while the number of women within the ranks has increased in recent years, some administrators privately concede that the department has fallen far short of many of its own long-standing affirmative-action goals.

One of those goals called for the department to employ 122 women sergeants by 1980.

Perez joined the Sheriff’s Department nine years before that, at the end of an era when women deputies were not allowed on patrol. They usually spent their careers as jail matrons.

Divorced at the time, with a 3-year-old son, Perez saw the Sheriff’s Department as a progressive organization where a hard worker could make her mark. After graduating from the Sheriff’s Academy, she spent more than three years as a jailer, working in the Sybil Brand Institute for Women, before being accepted in 1975 for a pilot program that allowed female deputies to hit the streets.

Perez liked patrol work, was given outstanding ratings and it was not long before she took the sergeant’s examination, a three-part assessment that evaluates each applicant based on oral reviews, a written test and job performance reviews by the applicant’s supervisors.

She studied hard and felt that she did well on all aspects of the exam. So when Perez placed 128th on a promotions list of more than 250 names, she complained. When the department promoted everybody ahead of her on the list and then cut off the list at Perez’s name, telling her that there were no more “vacancies,” she grew even more suspicious.

She appealed through department channels. When that failed, she wrote letters to half a dozen government agencies, including the county Civil Service Commission. Ultimately, she sued.

“I have never in my life met a person with as much moxie as her,” said her attorney, Dennis M. Harley. “She could have cut and run so many times. . . . She’s been carrying this thing since 1975.”

As her case made its way toward resolution, Perez said, she was treated as an outcast by some deputies and accused of disloyalty by others. Meanwhile, she was transferred from one jail-related assignment to another.

“Other women in the department would come up to me privately and tell me they agreed with what I was doing but they didn’t want to jeopardize their careers by coming forward with me because I was a troublemaker,” she said. “I remember one even sent me flowers to say thanks.”

Eventually, Perez was promoted to sergeant. In 1983, she managed to transfer to the Pico Rivera substation, where she is assigned to patrol duties.

“I’ve been told I don’t have a career in this department but I’m not going to stop fighting now,” she said. “I’m planning on staying for my retirement.”

She has 4 1/2 years to go before she can collect a 20-year pension.