Parks supports suit against police

A police lieutenant who sued the Los Angeles Police Department last fall has found a powerful supporter of her claim: former police chief and now Councilman Bernard C. Parks.

Parks voluntarily filed a declaration in the lawsuit brought by Lt. Corina Smith against the city, Police Chief William J. Bratton and others. In the suit, which was filed last October, Smith alleged that command officers blocked her promotion to captain in 2004 because of a false rumor and that she faced retaliation when she complained.

In the statement filed in court last week, Parks said Smith’s treatment “could lead to an effective argument that Lt. Smith is being subject to retaliation by her supervisors.”

Some City Hall observers said Parks’ declaration might be perceived as part of his ongoing ill feelings toward Bratton, who took over the department when Parks was denied a second term as chief.

“It’s hard to separate politics from it,” said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. “The perception may be that this is sour grapes.”

Nonetheless, Parks’ declaration could be a serious blow to the city’s defense and gives a boost to Smith’s lawsuit, experts said. A spokesman for the councilman said Parks’ views of Bratton had nothing to do with his intervention on Smith’s behalf.

The lawsuit alleged that command officers relied on a false rumor to bump her out of contention for a promotion to captain during a round of promotions in which all five available captain slots went to men.

“I would think that would have significant credibility with a jury, having the former police chief who is a City Council member file something that basically substantiated her allegations,” said Arnold I. Siegel, a clinical professor of law at Loyola Law School, who has handled employment matters. “You don’t typically see a high-level employee submit a declaration supporting the plaintiff.”

LAPD officials, including Smith’s former supervisor, denied that she was retaliated against but declined further comment because of the pending litigation.

Smith, an 18-year LAPD veteran, said in her lawsuit that the department had twice investigated -- and found no truth to -- a rumor that stemmed from a long-ago breakup of her relationship with another officer. The rumor had it that she was so distraught that she had stood naked on the end of a diving board and threatened to shoot herself.

Over the years, the rumor had been spread repeatedly by male officers to denigrate her, Smith alleged in her suit.

“The rumor is of a nature that creates a hostile work environment and constitutes sexual harassment,” the lawsuit said.

When she complained, Smith said, Cmdr. Stuart Maislin refused to take a formal complaint, telling her instead that she, as a department supervisor, could submit it herself.

After she sued, according to an amended complaint filed last week, she was reassigned from overseeing key functions of the department’s risk-management office to doing what she called “make-work”: reading all department special orders, chief memos and manuals to see which provisions pertained to watch commanders.

Parks did not return calls for comment Monday but said in his declaration that such work normally would be assigned to a lower-ranked researcher.

“The combination of removal from her customary duties, stripping Lt. Smith of her command responsibilities, apparent deliberate underutilization of experience and effective reduction in pay appear to be a combination of circumstances that could lead to an effective argument that Lt. Smith is being subject to retaliation by her supervisors,” Parks’ declaration said.

Bratton is not alleged to have participated directly in meetings regarding promotion decisions about Smith, but the lawsuit said that he, as chief, was the person “ultimately responsible for ... investigating allegations of misconduct [and] ... promotions and demotions.”

The lawsuit said Smith later was told that she had not been promoted because some command officers thought that she did not get along with her peers and that she had “poor leadership ability.”

However, Smith said, she had received outstanding personnel ratings reports that included her leadership training.

From 1999 to the present, more than 100 lawsuits that contain retaliation allegations against the department have been filed, officials said.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com