200 Officers Sue LAPD, Saying They Were Retaliated Against

Nearly 200 current and former officers are now plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department, alleging that they were retaliated against when they tried to report misconduct, an attorney said Thursday.

“Once you become an LAPD pickle, you can never become a cucumber again,” said Bradley Gage, who represents the officers suing the Police Department, at a news conference in his Woodland Hills law office. “All of these officers have been pickled.”

The number of plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which also names selected LAPD supervisors as defendants, has tripled in the last three months. Originally filed in August in Los Angeles County Superior Court, it has been refiled in U.S. District Court downtown because it involves federal civil rights claims.

Appearing with Gage were two plaintiffs, twin sisters Theresa and Lisa Golt, who claimed they were jailed on false charges. Last November, each of the sisters was charged in Los Angeles County with issuing bail without a license and illegally accessing confidential information from law enforcement computers. They were arrested again in December in Orange County on suspicion of running a bail bond business without a license.

Lisa Golt, a former LAPD officer, held up a driver license-sized card Thursday that she said was her valid state bail agent license. But at the time she was arrested, she alleged, someone had tampered with her license status in the state’s database.

Lisa Golt, who was fired by the LAPD for using pepper spray while off-duty, said she believed she was retaliated against because the company she worked for provided bail for former Rampart officers who were on trial on corruption charges, and for being an outspoken critic of LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks. In 1999, she led a campaign to encourage other officers to sign written instructions to bar Parks from attending their funerals if they were killed in the line of duty.

She also claimed she had refused to lie during an unfair internal investigation of a sergeant and raised the ire of LAPD’s top brass as a result.

Theresa Golt, a current officer, is on administrative leave while charges against her are pending.

Officer Jason Lee, an LAPD spokesman, declined comment, saying department policy bars comment on pending lawsuits. Defense lawyers from the city attorney’s office could not be reached Thursday.