Harassment Complaints Continue to Dog LAPD

The West Los Angeles division of the Los Angeles Police Department was long considered the worst police station in the city for women to work at, and it was the place where, in 1993, the LAPD decided to make its stand against sexual harassment and discrimination.

Three years, more than 100 interviews and an unparalleled inquiry later, the department has ignored many of its own recommendations on how to improve life for women in the LAPD.

“No member of command staff or mid-level management has ever been held accountable for allowing the hostile work environment to persist at WLA [West Los Angeles division],” Police Commission Inspector General Katherine Mader wrote in an Oct. 15 memo that she shared with the chief’s top staff and that was obtained by The Times. “To date, the most serious discipline imposed at WLA for creating a hostile work environment for females has been an ‘official reprimand’ of one officer.”

Like Mader, many women in the LAPD saw its investigation of West Los Angeles as a test of leadership, and many have concluded that the department failed. The result of that failure, many now say, is that harassment and discrimination have festered and spread. Complaints dog the department, and plaintiffs continue to be added to a large and growing class-action case known as Tipton-Whittingham vs. Los Angeles.

“Management has thumbed its nose at this problem,” said Officer Mary Elizabeth Hatter, who filed a harassment and discrimination lawsuit against the LAPD and has joined the Tipton-Whittingham case. “I had to prove myself every single day as a police officer. How can management just turn its back on me?”

Department officials have always closely guarded the results of the 1994 West Los Angeles inquiry, called an audit, refusing public requests for copies and resisting efforts by outside lawyers to review it. But a copy obtained by The Times reveals that investigators uncovered ample evidence of harassment and discrimination.

Sexist and racist remarks were reported, as were allegations that male police officers failed to back up women who needed help. Mistreatment was so ingrained that women had come to accept it as a part of life in West Los Angeles, investigators concluded.

“Many female officers expressed the opinion that there weren’t any problems at WLA, but talked about male officers who didn’t like females, ignored or refused to talk to females or did not want to work with females,” according to an eight-page summary of the audit dated Feb. 8, 1994. “They expressed an acceptance for these types of attitudes and treatment as part of the job or as part of WLA.”

After reaching those conclusions, the auditors recommended a number of changes. To this day, many remain unfulfilled. Among them:

* Initiate a mass transfer of officers in West Los Angeles. About a dozen of the station’s 300 or so officers were transferred and others left on their own, but no “mass transfer” ever occurred.

* Investigate a top department official for holding a sexual harassment personnel complaint rather than acting on it, as LAPD rules require. Deputy Chief Ron Frankle--then in charge of West Bureau, which oversees police operations in West Los Angeles--was allowed to retire without suffering any discipline, although department investigators concluded that he had violated LAPD policy.

* Redeploy women throughout the department to ensure that every police division includes female supervisors. Although the number of women at the LAPD is growing--the LAPD employs a higher percentage of women than almost any big-city police department in the country--to this day there are units that have never been supervised by a woman. The department has just three female captains and no woman with the rank of commander, deputy chief or assistant chief; some units, such as the Special Weapons and Tactics Team, have never had a female officer.

* Conduct audits throughout the department to guard against similar cabals of sexist officers. Police Chief Willie L. Williams said the department performed three other audits. Other department sources confirmed that number and added that the subsequent inquiries were far less intense than the West Los Angeles probe.

* Create a formal briefing process so that leadership changes do not leave incoming patrol captains unclear about problems they are inheriting. According to some LAPD captains and others, briefings, when they occur, remain unofficial; sometimes they are overlooked altogether.

“It is a very mixed review,” said City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a leading voice on harassment and discrimination issues. “Most women who talk to me . . . are still very unhappy.”

Of all the recommendations that were ignored or fulfilled only in part, none riles women more than the failure to move a substantial number of the station’s officers and supervisors.

“We didn’t rotate everybody out,” Williams acknowledged in a recent interview, adding: “We rotated a major portion of the supervisors.”

According to department sources, about a dozen sergeants, detectives and a few others were transferred soon after the audit. Most supervisors stayed put. And one officer who was allowed to stay was then-Det. Mark Fuhrman, whose views about women in policing would later become a source of national embarrassment for Williams and the department. Fuhrman not only escaped punishment--he was promoted.

“As time went on, it became increasingly clear that, strong statements notwithstanding, there was not the will to truly make the change,” said former Police Commission President Gary Greenebaum, who headed the civilian board at the time the audit was completed. “I think the chief has done nothing, really, to make those changes.”

*

“If a senior manager stands in the way or I find is part of the problem, they’re going to be gone. Period,” Williams said in 1994. “By whatever means necessary, they’re going to be gone.”

Williams made those comments just after the audit had ended. But although the audit criticized a number of department supervisors, none of them was punished.

Captains who ran the police station told investigators that they were aware of their area’s reputation for hostility to women, but their efforts to handle the problem were ineffective. Most lieutenants and sergeants interviewed as part of the probe said they were not aware of that reputation.

Nothing was done to discipline those captains, lieutenants and sergeants.

More strikingly, investigators concluded that Frankle, then in charge of the department’s West Bureau, held a personnel complaint against two West Los Angeles officers “in abeyance” rather than act on it.

Frankle retired two years after the audit was completed. He left with his full pension and rank intact. He was never demoted, transferred or suspended.

Lawyer Barry Levin, who at the time represented Frankle as a member of the Command Officers’ Assn., said Frankle committed no wrongdoing and was never charged with an administrative offense relating to West Los Angeles. “There was absolutely no connection between any of that and his retirement,” Levin said.

Mader noted that no top officers were ever held accountable in West Los Angeles or in other areas with identified sexual harassment problems. She blamed LAPD leaders for failing to honestly and consistently respond to complaints.

“The hostile work environment was allowed to continue at WLA because of a failure of command staff to take the issue seriously,” Mader said. “Management within WLA took their cue from command staff, and were indifferent to the problem.”

Told of that assessment, Williams at first complained that he had not seen Mader’s memo, then brusquely said it was wrong.

“That’s not an accurate analysis,” he said. “I’m not going to get in a debate with her because I don’t have a clue what she based that on. . . . Were managers held accountable? Sure, managers were held accountable.”

Williams would not say what form that accountability took, beyond adding that “a lot of people in the organization were made aware of what went wrong in West L.A.”

*

Neadie Moore joined the LAPD in 1983 and was promoted quickly. She was a squad leader in her Police Academy class, and after three years, had risen to the rank of P3, a senior police officer. She won coveted assignments and received favorable evaluations.

And yet, she says, male colleagues went out of their way to disrespect her. According to Moore, who is a named plaintiff in the Tipton-Whittingham lawsuit, one partner spent his entire shift yammering to her about oral sex; another boasted about cheating on his wife and juggling girlfriends.

“Oftentimes,” Moore recalled, “people would say to me: ‘How’d you manage to get a spot there? Did you have your kneepads on?’ ”

Her experience is one of dozens in which women complain of mistreatment--complaints that extend far beyond West Los Angeles.

Liz Hatter received positive performance evaluations for years. And yet, she alleges, supervisors groped her and disparaged her abilities. When she complained, she says, they retaliated against her and their retaliation increased when she refused to back down.

Virginia Acevedo, who has filed her own lawsuit, recalls racist and sexist epithets, as well as a grim scene in Sacramento, when a fellow member of the department’s honor guard insulted her and gave her hotel room number to a waiter, saying she “needed to get laid.”

Janine Bouey--whose allegations of mistreatment included a male colleague breaking into her house and others leaving Ku Klux Klan material on her car--recently settled her lawsuit against the department. She received $430,000.

At least four other LAPD employees claim to have been raped by colleagues.

Amid these complaints, the LAPD’s top brass has sent mixed signals. On one hand, Williams talks tough about pursuing harassers. But the chief’s top staff includes at least three officials accused of committing harassment or tolerating it by their subordinates.

A fourth official downplayed the entire issue in an internal LAPD memorandum written shortly after the West Los Angeles audit. According to that June 1994 memo, Cmdr. Keith Bushey disputed the notion that the LAPD tolerated more sexual harassment than most work cultures, and said the Police Department was “head and shoulders above most other organizations.” Shortly after writing that memo, Bushey was put in charge of LAPD Personnel Group, where he was responsible for overseeing police recruiting and the investigation of discrimination complaints, among other things.

Bushey recently retired, but a controversial top officer who remains, Cmdr. Tim McBride, is the lead spokesman for the Police Department, second only to Williams in terms of his visibility to outside observers. McBride was named as a defendant in one sexual harassment lawsuit and was the captain in charge of Foothill Division when Bouey, Hatter and others say that working conditions at the station were deplorable for women.

Asked about the symbolism of McBride speaking for the department at a time when the chief has vowed to crack down on supervisors who tolerate harassment, Williams responded: “No one made any complaint to me about then-Capt. McBride’s complaint history or rumors or anything prior to his promotion to commander. . . . I am confident that Cmdr. McBride, in his role as commanding officer of the Community Affairs Group, represents and reflects my thoughts and my views completely.”

McBride, whose mother was a police officer, denied any wrongdoing and said he is “deeply committed to helping women in law enforcement.” In his current command, a number of women work for him. None has registered any official complaint about his conduct.

*

The LAPD’s progress toward eliminating sexual harassment and discrimination is hard to measure.

Last year, the LAPD reported 33 gender-related complaints, a category that includes reports of domestic violence, sexual harassment, discrimination and other areas of gender-based misconduct.

The 1995 numbers are down from 43 cases two years ago, but like many numbers that the LAPD reports, they are problematic. The case summaries for 1995 do not include any complaint against a captain, for instance, even though other records show that a complaint was filed against Capt. Robert Kurth in West Los Angeles on Nov. 1, 1995. Department spokesmen could not explain why some cases might be missing from the official summary.

Even an accurate accounting would not fully explain the size of the problem, because many women are reluctant to make their grievances known for fear of retaliation.

In interviews for this article and in lawsuits filed in recent years, many women said years of favorable evaluations suddenly turned sour when they filed complaints. Many said peers turned against them, creating such stressful working conditions that they were forced out of work.

Carol Sobel, an ACLU lawyer involved in the Tipton-Whittingham case, said she receives more calls from victims every time the lawsuit generates publicity. Already, more than 80 plaintiffs have joined the lawsuit, which is the subject of controversial settlement negotiations.

And Mader’s memorandum makes clear that other women are seeking help from her office. “From reports and information received by the IG’s office,” she wrote, “it is apparent that what occurred in WLA is not unique.”

Some, like Goldberg, hope that the long-delayed launch of a new discrimination unit will encourage more women to come forward and will help push progress at the department. Others remain skeptical, concerned that the LAPD’s history of inaction may be next to impossible to overcome.

Williams says he believes progress is being made.

“At the end of the day . . . you say: ‘Have you tried to deal with this issue differently and more effectively?’ ” Williams said. “ ‘Have you had more successes in ’96 than we had in ‘92? Have you tried to create a different atmosphere? Have you tried to move forward?’ I think the answer in a lot of areas is yes. But it’s up to the individual to decide how much or how well.”