Union Claims Harassment of Civilian Workers in Sheriff’s Dept. : Labor: A letter calling for reform cites two incidents. A spokesman rebuts the allegations and says great strides have been made in improving relationships.

A representative of civilian Sheriff’s Department workers at the Central Jail has complained of “incidents of harassment, intimidation, disrespect and lack of professionalism” by deputies in their treatment of non-uniformed employees. A department spokesman rebutted the allegations, saying the relationships “are improving all the time.”

The letter to Sheriff Sherman Block from Sandra Stewart of the Service Employees International Union decried what Stewart termed “a pervasive attitude that the civilian employee may be subjected to violations of their civil and legal rights because they are civilian employees . . . in a caste system set up by the department.”

“We are not attempting to indict all sworn (uniformed) personnel,” Stewart wrote. “It is our experience that most of the sworn personnel are to be highly commended. Our fear is that this ‘caste mentality’ is growing and has somehow grouped civilian employees into a slave category that gives them even less civil rights to dignity than those of the inmates.”

Responding for Block, Capt. Dennis Dahlman, commander of the Central Jail, said in an interview: “Since I’ve been in this department, the non-sworn have felt that they are not given the respect that they deserve.”

But, Dahlman said, “the department has been working diligently and I would say in the last 10 years, the department has made great strides in closing the gap between the sworn and the non-sworn. . . . We need a dialogue. It’s been constant and I think things are better.”

Stewart, however, cited two incidents in her letter that she said in an interview clearly show that reform is necessary.

In the first incident, she wrote, a female salesclerk in the Central Jail “was subjected to abuse by an inmate when he smeared semen on her while transacting business at the clerk’s store. A nearby deputy knew the inmate had just masturbated and laughed it off . . . (He said) ‘It’s no big deal.’

“The employee made a written report and requested an AIDS test. Even after all this, when we talked to Employee Relations recently they said: ‘If the commander feels it is warranted, they will investigate.’ Just who can she talk to to break this silence?”

Dahlman responded that the inmate, who since the incident has been transferred to a state prison, was tested for AIDS “and he did not test positive.” Beyond that, he said there had been an investigation, but it had not verified that the incident had occurred the way the clerk said it had.

“She knew these inmates, so she was kind of joking back and forth with them anyway,” he remarked.

The clerk, who asked that her name not be used, said in an interview that two deputies were present when the incident occurred.

“The thing that made me mad and disappointed me was that the deputies who were present with me did nothing,” she said. “Nothing happened for weeks, until I gave my paperwork to Sandy Stewart, and then it went to the watch commander. But if I hadn’t done that, nothing would have happened at all.”

The second incident referred to in the Stewart letter concerned another civilian clerk, Teneka Mitchell, who, Stewart wrote, “was put through an incredible ordeal” after an inmate reported that she was selling drugs.

Officers with the sheriff’s criminal investigation unit denied her representation while questioning her, and while doing so, “she was threatened with her job, loss of custody of her child, and told they had filmed evidence against her. They said if she was willing to resign, they would not prosecute.”

But, finally, Stewart wrote, “at the end of the interrogation, Ms. Mitchell . . . was told she was clean. . . . We here at Local 660 would like to know under what ‘color of authority’ was Ms. Mitchell treated in this manner. Is there a ‘policy’ or set of rules that gives the department the right to violate an individual’s civil rights?”

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Gerald Minnis, who is in charge of all of Block’s internal investigations units, said in an interview that all Sheriff’s Department employees sign a pledge to submit to searches and interviews conducted by internal affairs officers.

Minnis denied that the clerk had been threatened by investigators as described in the letter. “My understanding of what occurred is that she was subjected to a search and interviewed. It is exactly the same thing we would have done to a sworn employee undergoing the same kind of investigation.”

The commander added: “We maybe do a better job of educating our sworn employees as to what we expect from them in conduct.”

Stewart asked in her letter for complete investigations of both incidents, which she said are only examples of the kinds of thing that all too frequently occur, and she asked Block to send her “copies of authority and legal rulings by which the department conducts criminal and internal investigations.”

So far, she said, she has not received any response. The letter was dated June 14.