A veteran Los Angeles police captain assigned to help oversee the policing of Metro subway lines and buses has tentatively settled his lawsuit against the city in which he alleged that he was reprimanded for a trivial matter in retaliation for complaining that the commander of his unit was using some personnel for work unrelated to transportation duties.
Capt. Brian Pratt’s Los Angeles Superior Court whistleblower suit was filed in July 2021 and sought unspecified damages. The captain’s attorneys filed court papers indicating that a “conditional” resolution of the case had been reached with the expectation a request for dismissal will be brought by Aug. 17. No terms were divulged. Judge William E. Weinberger has scheduled a July 20 post-settlement hearing.
In their previous court papers, lawyers for the City Attorney’s Office stated that “any alleged conduct by (the city) constituted a just and proper exercise of management discretion, undertaken for a fair and honest reason without malice or unlawful motive.”
According to his suit, Pratt was hired in 1988 and was promoted to captain in June 2011, then upgraded to captain III in June 2013.
The city of Los Angeles was awarded a five-year, $370 million contract with Metro in February 2017 to provide LAPD officers to patrol Metro subway lines and buses within the city. The LAPD established a Transit Services Bureau and a Transit Services Division within the bureau.
Pratt began serving as the Captain III of the Transit Services Division in March of 2017, the suit stated. In early 2019, Deputy Chief Blake Chow became the TSB commanding officer, the suit stated. Chow and Commander Michael Oreb, the TSB assistant commanding officer, took multiple transit employees being paid by MTA to perform work for the agency and used them for jobs that “did not relate to MTA at all,” according to the suit.
Pratt allegedly began complaining about the alleged misuse of the employees one or two times a month beginning in February 2019.
In July 2020, Pratt found out for the first time that Oreb had initiated a masked personnel complaint against him for a “trivial matter” in December 2019, the suit stated. Pratt believes the complaint, the subject of which is not detailed in the suit, prevented him from being promoted to commander.
In addition, Pratt learned in October 2020 that the LAPD placed his name on the Officer and Recurrent Witness Information Tracking System list in June 2020 before he was interviewed concerning Oreb’s personnel complaint against him, the suit stated. ORWITS contains the names of peace officers who have been accused of making false statements and is accessible by government agencies, according to the suit.
Having his name in ORWITS will adversely impact Pratt’s ability to obtain employment opportunities outside the LAPD, the suit stated.
In November 2020, Chow sustained the allegation against Pratt and the next month the LAPD officially reprimanded him based on the complaint that was placed in his personnel file and will harm his ability to obtain post-retirement employment, according to the suit.