LAPD Told to Void Gay Officer’s Suspension

A Superior Court judge has ordered the Los Angeles Police Department to rescind the 1996 suspension of former Sgt. Mitchell Grobeson, who won a landmark legal settlement in 1993 intended to end alleged anti-gay discrimination and harassment within the agency.

In an order issued Tuesday, Judge Carolyn Kuhl instructed police to provide Grobeson with pay plus interest to cover 195 days during which he was suspended without salary in two separate disciplinary actions. The judge’s order did not specify the amount owed.

She also ordered the LAPD to remove all mention of the disciplinary actions from its records.

Grobeson was charged with wearing his police uniform without permission in various gay-oriented activities such as a gay pride festival and in a magazine advertisement recruiting homosexuals to the LAPD.

Police officials did not respond to requests Wednesday for comment.

In February 1993, Grobeson, along with two other officers, won $770,000 in damages and a promise by the department to improve its recruitment, hiring and training of gay officers. In January 1996, Grobeson filed a new suit alleging that the department had failed to enact the reforms it had promised in the 1993 settlement and that officers and supervisors were harassing him on the job.

Five months later, the department initiated the misconduct charges against Grobeson. He later retired on a stress disability claim and challenged the suspensions in court.

In 1999, Kuhl invalidated the suspensions on procedural grounds because the LAPD Board of Rights modified the formal charges against Grobeson without giving him fair notice, the former officer’s attorney, Bert Voorhees, said Wednesday.