Officer Vows to Fight Same-Sex Harassment Case

As a Los Angeles police officer, Michelle Myers spent nearly eight years patrolling the city’s streets and investigating child abuse cases. But now, instead of fighting crime, she is fighting to hold on to her job.

In an unusual case, Myers, 34, is accused of sexually harassing another woman on the force--a charge that Myers denies.

“I did say some things to her, but was it sexual harassment? No,” Myers said during an interview at her Agua Dulce home. “Was it an inappropriate comment? Maybe.”

Acting Police Chief Bayan Lewis must decide whether to fire Myers, as a panel of LAPD administrators recommended July 11. The Board of Rights found her guilty of making inappropriate remarks and gestures to Officer Penny Beaman in 1995, when both women were assigned to the Van Nuys Division Abused Child Unit. The board also found Myers guilty of making improper remarks to several male officers and a female civilian employee.

Lewis is expected to render his decision as early as this week. Beaman, who was recently promoted to detective and transferred to the Wilshire Division, could not be reached for comment, and department representatives declined to discuss the case.

Myers, meanwhile, vows she will fight “tooth and nail” to keep her job and said that she plans to appeal the board’s findings. Even if her fight eventually ends up in a courtroom, the outcome remains unclear.

“Same-sex harassment” is the latest frontier of workplace anti-discrimination law, and courts across the nation are divided over whether the same rules apply when the harasser and the victim are of the same gender.

So while the LAPD found Myers guilty of 24 allegations--the bulk of which dealt with Beaman--and although California courts have upheld claims of same-sex harassment, the issue of whether federal civil rights laws ban such harassment has become a source of controversy.

Just last month, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear a case involving crude horseplay on an offshore oil-drilling platform in Louisiana to decide whether federal civil rights laws protect a man subjected to sexual harassment by another man on the job.

In Myers’ case, she is accused of exposing her breasts and groin to Beaman and asking Beaman: “Are you into women? If I was into women, would you be into me?” Myers denies the charges and said she was “floored” when she learned that Beaman had filed a complaint against her.

The two women had not only been friends at work, according to Myers, but they had also shared lunch breaks and even played racquetball together on a few occasions. Myers said she and Beaman had worked together on the unit for about five months when in November 1995, Myers was called to police headquarters and informed that she had been accused of sexual harassment.

Myers went on stress leave for three weeks and was transferred against her will to the West Valley Division in December. In January, she learned the identity of her accuser when she was interviewed by Internal Affairs.

Myers said she believes she is taking the fall for problems in the Abused Child Unit, which she said was known throughout the department for having a hostile work environment. In September 1995, she said, then-Police Chief Willie Williams ordered a work-environment audit of the unit. None of her colleagues complained about her behavior then, she said, though she acknowledges that she did not get along with several of her co-workers.

“There was never an indication that something was wrong,” Myers said. “But now everybody says I was just a Tazmanian devil.”

One by one, Myers said, her former colleagues testified about her character during her Board of Rights hearings, which lasted more than six months. Myers contends their allegations are twisted versions of what happened.

Myers, for example, acknowledges telling one of her supervisors that his jeans were too tight. She says that she even went shopping with him later to help him pick out some more comfortable-fitting Wranglers. During her hearing, however, Myers said the same supervisor testified that she had told him: “Your butt looks good in tight jeans.” Myers said her supervisor testified that he let her go shopping with him because she had invited herself along and he did not want to offend her by refusing.

Myers said she believes the department mishandled her case by not warning her that there was a problem with her behavior; by prolonging her case for so long that she had four different defense representatives; by failing to provide her with a copy of the conclusions of the work-environment audit; and by failing to conclude its investigation of the matter within a year, as required by its own policies. She also contends that she is being unfairly singled out for punishment.

“A lot of people were loud and boisterous and made jokes of a sexual nature in that office,” Myers said, “yet they’re picking on me because I haven’t gotten along with several of the people there.

“I think I’m a good cop and that I am an asset to the community.”