Deputy Claims Retaliation From Sheriff’s Office, County
By: Mary Stachyra Lopez | January 2, 2015
A deputy with the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office claims she faced intimidation, threats and other retaliation after she made a sexual harassment report to Internal Affairs, according to filings in a federal lawsuit.
The plaintiff — at the time a Master Deputy assigned to the Criminal Justice Academy in Chantilly — alleges that around 2009, she confided in a supervisor that she was being stalked and harassed by James Craig Summers, then a patrol officer with the Fairfax County Police Department. The suit claims that the supervisor eventually exploited her vulnerability by making unwanted advances toward her.
A Prince William County jury convicted Summers of forcible sodomy in April 2013. The Independent is not identifying the plaintiff because she is the victim of a sexual assault.
After the plaintiff complained to Internal Affairs about the supervisor, she was “shunned and ostracized by her colleagues and her chain of command in retaliation,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Her colleagues refused to speak to her or go to lunch with her. She was excluded from group activities such as group runs and defensive tactics scenarios. When she would speak during roll call, others would speak over her and laugh out loud at her.”
The lawsuit alleges that another supervisor told a colleague not to speak to the plaintiff because “she would only get her in trouble.” The Sheriff’s Office acknowledges in court filings that this incident did occur, but says the motivation was to have the colleague “maintain a certain level of supervisor-to-subordinate relationship.”
The atmosphere at the Academy became increasingly hostile, the lawsuit claims, with a recruit beating the plaintiff “well beyond the point of excessive force” during a training exercise designed to prevent such behavior during an arrest.
Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff’s performance rating was dropped in the area of working cooperatively with others.
“[Name redacted] is currently the complainant in an ongoing Internal Affairs investigation…This unsettled situation has resulted in tension and distrust among the staff,” the Aug. 19, 2013, performance evaluation states.
The evaluation goes on to say that “The physical and mental stress placed on [name redacted] in these past months is evident. She has attempted to overcome and repair relations with her fellow staff members. However, several of these relations may be damaged beyond repair.”
When the plaintiff complained about the evaluation to the police officer who wrote it, he responded “are you that f***ing righteous?”
The Sheriff’s Office, in its response, acknowledges the comment and the evaluation, but says the reference to the Internal Affairs investigation was “eventually stricken at the direction of Sheriff Mark Sites,” and was not included in her final performance evaluation.
The plaintiff says she was eventually transferred to another role outside the Criminal Justice Academy as part of the ongoing retaliation. The Sheriff’s Office says the move was due to a five-year organizational plan; Sites also thought “the environment at the CJA was unhealthy for her and that he would like to transfer her into another role and asked for her input as to where she would like to go.”
The Sheriff’s Office and Fairfax County denied most of the lawsuit’s account in their separate responses, filed in November and December.
“The Sheriff’s Office’s actions with respect to [the plaintiff] were at all times motivated by legitimate, non-discriminatory, job-related business reasons, and/or were based on reasonable factors, which are authorized under the law and which were without discriminatory intent.”
Fairfax County, sued as a separate defendant, tried unsuccessfully to have the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiff was solely employed by the Sheriff’s Office. Since sheriffs in Virginia are technically elected to serve independently of local governments, courts have ruled that local governments cannot be liable for the actions of a sheriff’s office. U.S. District Court Judge James Cacheris ruled Dec. 19 that the police department effectively acted as a co-employer at the Academy, where the two agencies work collaboratively to train law enforcement personnel. Therefore, the plaintiff is seeking to hold Fairfax County separately liable for the the actions of the police department, not the Sheriff’s Office.
The plaintiff is seeking $300,000 against each defendant and reinstatement of her previous role.
http://centrevilleindependent.com/deputy-claims-retaliation-from-sheriffs-office-county/
The drama continues!