Sheriff’s Dept. Concedes on 2 Sex Bias Suits

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, where women deputies have long complained of sex discrimination and vulgar treatment by male counterparts, has agreed to spend up to $4.5 million over the next four years to improve the lot of women in the department, according to a legal agreement announced Thursday.

The 32-page consent decree ends 12 years of warring over two landmark lawsuits alleging that the women, who make up 12.5% of the 7,915-member department, were routinely exposed to job discrimination and acts of sexual harassment, including training films depicting bare-breasted women.

The department has promised to implement several new policies, including gender sensitivity training and a revised sexual harassment policy that would make the agency one of the most women-friendly in the country, said Pasadena attorney Dennis M. Harley, who represented female deputies in the lawsuits.

“These policies are really on the cutting edge,” Harley said. “We looked at every consent decree of this nature in the country and this one has all they have and more. . . . We asked for a lot and they gave us a lot.”

Sheriff Sherman Block downplayed the scope of the department’s concessions, saying many of the decree’s changes were in the works anyway. “The greatest significance of the settlement is that it ends a lawsuit festering since 1980,” Block said. “And there’s nothing in the consent decree that I find offensive. . . . I think everything in it should be done, or we were already doing.”

County officials said a decision was made six months ago to settle the lawsuits and revamp attitudes in an agency plagued for years by allegations of lewd and unfair conduct toward women in the ranks.

“It is proof positive of our determination to see that deputies of all stripes are educated about each other and shows a tremendous effort by the department to do the right thing,” said Assistant County Counsel S. Robert Ambrose.

The decree, which has the force of a court order, is subject to final approval by U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi during a hearing March 1.

But county officials said they intend to stick to the far-reaching concessions they promised in the tentative agreement reached this week. The department’s 989 women deputies are to be notified by the end of the month of the agreement, the provisions of which include:

* Creation of a career resource center to enhance the advancement of women deputies.

* Establishment of an ombudsman position to resolve complaints of gender-based discrimination. Women deputies would be able to file complaints confidentially and would have the right to be informed of the outcome of any resulting investigation.

* Hiring of an educational development coordinator to examine the department’s training materials and programs and to recommend changes with regard to “gender-based sensitivities.” (One of the lawsuits complained of a defensive driving training film that depicted a topless woman motorist distracting a male deputy behind the wheel of a patrol car.)

* Implementation of mandatory cultural and gender diversity training for all sworn personnel, from Sheriff Block down.

* Establishment of “anti-sexual harassment policy and procedures” that comply with state and federal law.

The department has already instituted a policy to ensure that the percentage of women sergeants matches the percentage of women deputies, a concession reached after the courts held in 1988 that the department’s promotion policies discriminated against women.

Since then, the number of women sergeants has increased almost 34%, from 66 to 89, said Harley, the attorney for the women deputies.

While many law enforcement agencies have been accused of refusing to hire women, the Sheriff’s Department has been considered a leader since the early 1900s, most likely because it had to staff the county’s large women’s jail.

Women were permitted to take field jobs in the 1970s, Harley said, another innovation in the treatment of women deputies. The trouble began once the women were in uniform, with increasing complaints that the department allowed unfair, even crude, behavior.

Formal charges of sexual discrimination were brought in 1980 in a lawsuit filed by Deputy Susan Bouman Paolino, who charged that she was denied a promotion to sergeant despite her qualifications.

Ten years later, Deputy Laura Beard filed a suit alleging “almost daily abusive and demeaning remarks (and) sexually offensive posters and pictures.”

The courts have ruled in Paolino’s favor before, declaring in 1987 that women have been denied equal opportunity for promotion to sergeant, and, in 1988, forbidding the department to make any more sergeant promotions until it developed non-discriminatory procedures. This week’s consent decree settles Beard’s suit. Neither Paolino, who has since left the department, nor Beard, a field deputy, could be reached for comment Thursday.

The county’s sudden amenability to settling stunned attorneys who say they were locked in a “tooth-and-nail” battle with the Sheriff’s Department until six months ago. Then, Block signaled a marked change of attitude and indicated that sweeping concessions would be made to end the lawsuits and reform attitudes throughout his department, Harley said.

“It was as if Block drew a line in the sand,” he said.

In an interview Thursday, the sheriff said there was no sudden change of heart, just a continuing commitment to fairness.

A 37-year veteran of the department, Block has recently been under outside pressures for reform. While going along with some demands for change, he has nevertheless insisted that the sheriff’s office is reaffirming traditional values rather than establishing new ones.

Policies toward women, as well as toward the outside community, “have not changed,” Block said. “What has changed is the reordering of priorities. Emphasis on particular components of training has changed. In cultural awareness, in dealing with cultural diversity, we are entering into a new era.”