City to Pay $430,000 to Ex-LAPD Officer in Bias Suit Settlement

The city of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $430,000 to an African American former police officer who claimed that she was subjected to repeated racial and sexual harassment at the LAPD’s Foothill Division in Pacoima.

The City Council voted this week to settle a lawsuit filed by Janine Bouey, who charged that she was shunned and demoted to a menial job after complaining of mistreatment by white male officers at the north San Fernando Valley station.

Bouey, a member of the African-American Peace Officers Assn., also charged in the lawsuit that the harassment was intensified because of her views on race and gender issues in the department.

“Wherever she went, she was constantly confronted with comments about her ethnicity, about her gender, and comments about the fact that she spoke out on both those issues,” said Bouey’s attorney, Dan Stormer.

“People wouldn’t work with her, they called her names, and ultimately it forced her to leave the force. It’s a shame, because by all accounts, she was a first-rate officer.”

The settlement comes amid charges that the LAPD has tolerated racial discrimination and sexual harassment in the ranks. The department is also facing a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 80 female employees who claim that they were harassed. Last month, a 25-year veteran vice sergeant was ordered transferred from the Devonshire station after being investigated for allegedly harassing women. The officer went on administrative leave instead of accepting the transfer.

Cmdr. Tim McBride, an LAPD spokesman, said the issues of harassment and retaliation against female officers are “legitimate,” and added that the department is doing more than ever now to address them.

The LAPD has an 18-month training program for all employees to combat bias and harassment in the workplace, and Chief Willie L. Williams spoke to a meeting of more than 100 high-ranking officers Wednesday for more than an hour on sexual harassment, McBride said.

“Ideally we should have an organization that is free of bias and harassment in the workplace, and clearly the awards being provided in cases like this show that we have a long way to go,” McBride said.

“We’re getting more and more female officers and we have spent a great deal of effort integrating women into what was once an all-male profession. We have to continue to be more aggressive, to intervene and stop this kind of behavior.”

Bouey, now 37, joined the LAPD in 1987. In the spring of 1989, she said, she discovered a small card displaying the words “Holy Order Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” and the KKK logo on the windshield of her car, parked in a lot at the Foothill station accessible only to officers.

A few days earlier, a black officer at the station had found one of the cards on his locker, Bouey said.

She alleged that she endured repeated slurs from male officers and that some refused to be her partner on patrols. In some instances, her calls to the station for help in potential emergencies were ignored, she alleged.

She said she heard racist remarks broadcast over the police radio and saw them flash across the computer screen in her patrol car.

In the early 1990s, she spoke out repeatedly about harassment within the department. After the March 3, 1991, videotaped beating of Rodney King by several fellow officers from the Foothill Division, she testified before the Los Angeles County Grand Jury and the Christopher Commission about institutional racism.

Bouey left the LAPD in 1994 after being transferred to a clerical position “with no discernible future” at another station, Stormer said. She was awarded a disability pension on grounds of emotional distress stemming from her harassment charges.

She filed suit later that year.

City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said the settlement in the Bouey case will be just one of many payouts that the city will have to make to female officers unless there is “an end to the culture of bias” within the department.

“I’m not saying we haven’t made some progress in recent times, but we’re nowhere near where we need to be,” Goldberg said. “The problem is, these women officers live in fear of retaliation if they come forward and ask for help. We have to ensure that those who retaliate are going to be held responsible.”