Deputies’ Sexism Is a Failure of the Guys in Charge

This was Tuesday, the day Los Angeles County’s two female supervisors demanded an investigation into charges of sexism at the Sheriff’s Department. Sexism. At the Sheriff’s Department. Gee, who’da thunk. She would have laughed, if the whole thing didn’t make her feel like gagging. If she hadn’t spent the last five years learning just how sexism at the Sheriff’s Department works.

We were in the living room of her suburban house, a house she’s seen a lot of lately. Her kids ran in and out, stopping for hugs. She has a college degree, but went on to the sheriff’s academy because she thought she could make a difference. “I wanted, I still want,” she says, “to help.”

She’s not a rookie, nor is she some thin-skinned man-hater. She looks like what she is: a grown-up. Maybe that’s what set it off. For years, she dismissed it as cop stuff--the wisecracks at the academy about whether girls could cut it, the comments at briefing about being “on the rag.” Even when she made it to patrol, after the usual stint at the jail, she dismissed it. Once the guys arrested a transvestite and insisted that she do the strip search. “It was like, let’s all watch the female get shocked,” she said. “It was obvious he was a man, but the transvestite was really nice. I just said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, let’s just get this over with.’ ” Cop stuff. Part of the job.

Then she made detective and was assigned to an all-male team. On the day the list was posted, a woman in clerical sidled up to her. “Watch your back,” the friend said; the sergeant didn’t want a woman, and neither did a couple of the veteran detectives. Give it time, she thought. We’ll work it out. It took maybe an hour for reality to set in: She asked a question and in his loudest voice, one of her new peers wondered if she was “an idiot.” And so it went. It wasn’t everybody. But it doesn’t have to be when the guys in charge don’t make it stop.

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And they didn’t. She’d leave the house at 5 in the morning, not get home until 7 p.m. Months passed before she realized they’d given her three times the normal caseload, just to see if she’d break. She started a diary: “You’re not as stupid as you look,” one told her. Another introduced her to an underling as “my new trainee.” “Go get me a Coke!” the same guy later ordered, in front of the whole office, as if he somehow outranked her. When she ignored him, he shouted: “I told you to go. Get me. A Coke.” People asked her what was going on, offered sympathy. But nobody put a stop to it. Once, one of them crept over to say he was sorry. When she wasn’t sufficiently forgiving, he lost his temper. “Know what?” he shouted. “You’re just like my [expletive] wife.”

She started getting migraines, missing work. This is how it is with sexism in the department. It’s not just the big indignities--the references to sanitary napkins as “manhole covers,” the sex toys in patrol cars, et cetera. It’s not just the lesbian jokes and the rumors about which boss you probably slept with. It’s the grinding demoralization, week after week, month after month.

One day, the new guy would confide that he’d been told to avoid her. The next she’d be overhearing someone asking if they could work with another man. She lasted eight months, finally snapping after a barrage of comments about how, since she was wearing a suit, maybe she could go out and do something useful, like direct traffic. Twelve years at the department, and there was the lieutenant, sniggering right along with them, going, “Whoa, boys, she’s mad.” She filed first a complaint, then a successful lawsuit; eventually she got a stress pension and left.

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This is how it has been for decades with sexism in the department. It’s in the news this week because the new sheriff made an awkward attempt at affirmative action and the deputies union felt he should hear from the troops. The Internet comments that erupted had the usual talk-radio crudeness you tend to get with e-mail, where normal people get too emotional and come off like crackpots. But the underlying ill will was no fluke.

It isn’t everybody. But it doesn’t have to be if the guys in charge--including the guys in charge of the deputies union--don’t stop it. And by “stop it,” I don’t mean “investigate it” or “talk about it.” I mean, make it stop. Some $660,000 in taxpayer money was shelled out last year to settle claims like the aforementioned woman’s against the Sheriff’s Department--a stunning 40% of all employment discrimination settlements by the county government.

If these were corporate employees, this “cop stuff” we put up with would be called “hostility” and it would get people fired. Wanna know what happened to the men who harassed the detective? Zip. Their supervisors were upbraided, but the bullies themselves have been promoted. She, of course, seeks a new career.

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Shawn Hubler’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.