Settlement Reached in LAPD Suit

The city has agreed to pay $430,000 to an African American former police officer who claimed she was subjected to repeated racial and sexual harassment at the LAPD’s Foothill Division in Pacoima.

The City Council voted this week to settle a lawsuit filed by Janine Bouey, who charged that she was shunned and demoted to a menial job after complaining of mistreatment by white male officers at the north San Fernando Valley station.

Bouey, a member of the African-American Peace Officers Assn., also contended in the lawsuit that the harassment was intensified because of her views on race and gender issues in the department.

“Wherever she went, she was constantly confronted with comments about her ethnicity, about her gender, and comments about the fact that she spoke out on both those issues,” said Bouey’s attorney, Dan Stormer.

“People wouldn’t work with her, they called her names, and ultimately it forced her to leave the force. It’s a shame, because by all accounts, she was a first-rate officer.”

The settlement comes amid charges that the LAPD has tolerated racial discrimination and sexual harassment in the ranks. The department is also facing a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of 80 female employees who claim they were harassed, and last month a 25-year veteran vice sergeant was ordered transferred from the Devonshire station after being investigated for allegedly harassing women. The officer went on administrative leave instead of accepting the transfer.

Cmdr. Tim McBride, an LAPD spokesman, said the issues of harassment and retaliation against female officers are “legitimate,” but said the department is now doing more to address them.

The LAPD has an 18-month training program for all employees that is intended to combat bias and harassment in the workplace, and Chief Willie Williams, addressing a meeting of more than 100 high-ranking officers Wednesday, spoke for more than an hour on sexual harassment, McBride said.

“Ideally, we should have an organization that is free of bias and harassment in the workplace, and clearly the awards being provided in cases like this show that we have a long way to go,” McBride said.

“We’re getting more and more female officers and we have spent a great deal of effort integrating women into what was once an all-male profession. We have to continue to be more aggressive, to intervene and stop this kind of behavior.”

Bouey, 37, joined the LAPD in 1987. In the spring of 1989, she said, she found a small card with the words “Holy Order Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” and the KKK logo on the windshield of her car, which was parked in a lot at the Foothill station accessible only to officers.

Just a few days earlier, a black officer at the station had found one of the cards on his locker, Bouey said.

Bouey contended she endured repeated slurs from male officers about her race and gender, and that some officers refused to be her patrol partner. In some instances, she alleged, her calls to the station for help in potential emergencies were ignored.

She said she heard racist remarks broadcast over the police radio and saw them flash across the computer screen in her patrol car.

In the early 1990s, she spoke out repeatedly about harassment within the department, and following the March 3, 1991, videotaped beating of Rodney King by several of her fellow officers from the Foothill Division, she testified before the Los Angeles County Grand Jury and the Christopher Commission about institutional racism.

Bouey left the LAPD in 1994, after being transferred to a clerical position “with no discernible future” at another station, Stormer said. He said Bouey was awarded a disability pension on grounds of emotional distress stemming from her charges of harassment.

Bouey filed suit later that year.

City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said the settlement in the Bouey case will be just one of many payouts the city will have to make to female officers unless there is “an end to the culture of bias” within the department.

“I’m not saying we haven’t made some progress in recent times, but we’re nowhere near where we need to be,” Goldberg said. “The problem is, these women officers live in fear of retaliation if they come forward and ask for help. We have to ensure that those who retaliate are going to be held responsible.”

The Bouey case, though separate from the ACLU class-action suit, shows the need for a court ruling to compel the LAPD to address sexism and racism issues, Goldberg said.

The city and the ACLU have agreed in principle upon a consent decree to end the class-action suit, which would establish new policies to increase the hiring and promotion of women in the LAPD. But a federal court ruling on the consent decree, which is necessary for it to take effect, has been delayed.

Bouey’s attitude toward the $430,000 settlement, which was for emotional distress, is “bittersweet,” according to her attorney.

“She wanted to protect and to serve, but because the LAPD has refused to acknowledge its own racism and sexism, the public is twice punished by having to pay her pension and the settlement,” Stormer said.