The city of Los Angeles is asking a judge to uphold the three-day suspension for the alleged misconduct of a Los Angeles police sergeant that included kissing a department employee during an off-duty casino fundraising event in San Diego County in 2019.
Sgt. Darcy French’s Los Angeles Superior Court petition asks a judge to overturn the Board of Rights’ decision in June 2023 that supported allegations against the sergeant that were later signed off on by then-Chief Michel Moore, who also is named in the legal action.
According to French’s attorneys’ court papers, the Board of Rights panel found French guilty in June 2023 of the kissing allegation as well as a second count maintaining that she made “several inappropriate comments towards department employees.”
But in court papers filed Friday, the City Attorney’s Office says French’s penalty acknowledges the wrongfulness of the sergeant’s actions and imposed appropriate punishment.
“(French) was a supervisor at the time of the incident and should have known better and behaved better,” the City Attorney’s Office notes in its court papers, pointing out that the sergeant is an assistant watch commander who oversaw arrests and operations in the Southeast Division.
French said she did not kiss the gang enforcement officer, who was a subordinate, on the lips, but may have kissed him on one cheek, as she said she has a habit of doing with many officers, according to the City Attorney’s Office.
But despite French’s denial, the weight of the evidence supports that she indeed kissed the officer on the lips, according to the City Attorney’s Office, which further states in its court papers that another sergeant intervened and separated the two “because he knew, instinctively, that such a show of sexual interest was inappropriate and would be considered conduct unbecoming a police officer and supervisor.”
The second sergeant also believed French was drunk and said she made inappropriate hostile remarks to him on the bus ride back to Los Angeles, the City Attorney’s Office states. Although the officers were not on duty, supervisors are expected to conduct themselves professionally, the City Attorney’s Office further argues in its pleadings.
But according to French’s petition, French’s suspension and the misconduct findings were actually not supported by the evidence. The Board of Rights also failed to recognize that the statute of limitations was violated, according to the petition.
Moore “failed to perform his legal duty” under the city charter, causing a deprivation of French’s right to due process, the petition filed last Sept. 18 further alleges.
A hearing on French’s petition is scheduled July 24 before Judge Stephen I. Goorvitch.
French joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1998. In February 2023, she filed a separate legal action against the city, alleging in a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that she was the target of harassment because she complained that other LAPD members had disseminated sexist images. She further maintains that her bosses tried to suspend and demote her after she came forward.