A Black investigator in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office who alleges she’s been harassed in the workplace has responded to a motion by county attorneys to dismiss her lawsuit, stating in new court papers that the Bureau of Investigation bullies personnel to muzzle their equity complaints.
Sgt. Karen Pewitt’s Los Angeles Superior Court was filed in April 2020 and originally included multiple claims and defendants, including former District Attorney Jackie Lacey. The case has been pared over the years. Her lawsuit currently consists of four harassment claims and one for alleged failure to prevent harassment.
“Reporting misconduct, equity violations or other violations of the employer’s policies was frowned upon because there is a code of silence,” Pewitt says in a sworn declaration submitted in opposition the dismissal motion. “There were huge penalties to pay for reporting. I on occasion have been persuaded by command staff not to report incidents involving equity issues because of the consequences.”
Pewitt alleges the Bureau of Investigation uses “bullying and cult-like brainwashing tactics” in order to “control, shut down, intimidate and muzzle” personnel.
“Employees have expressed they had no protection from retaliation when they desired to report equity incidents, misconduct or abusive behavior,” Pewitt further says. “The tactics used have been passed down from one administration to another, creating a culture of suppression of the weak or the targeted.”
Pewitt says that in April 2016 she was reassigned to the Public Assistance Crimes Enforcement Unit.
“This was a backwards move for me and constituted an adverse employment action,” Pewitt says. “This was an assignment reserved for entry-level and newly promoted sergeants, which I was not. My request to be transferred to assignments on my assignment preference form were declined, even though I had more seniority than the sergeants assigned to those units.”
Pewitt says that by 2020 she believed she had exhausted every effort to help protect herself without success and so she sought legal advice.
Every policy and/or protection the county of Los Angeles had in place to protect employees failed to protect me from the white male lieutenants who supervised me and constantly harassed me,” Pewitt contends.
But according to the county’s court papers, the remaining causes of action in Pewitt’s lawsuit are barred by the statute of limitations and therefore her case should be dismissed by Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis during a scheduled Aug. 11 hearing.
“Without substantial evidence that some harassing act occurred within the limitations period, her harassment claims cannot survive,” according to the county attorneys’ court papers.
While on the one hand Pewitt alleges her tormentors were men in a “good old white boys club,” on the other hand she claims that Lacey, the first Black female district attorney in Los Angeles County history, was one of her harassers, the county lawyers further state in their pleadings.
Pewitt additionally alleges that her supervisors yelled at her because she is a Black female, but also contends that a Hispanic male co-worker was equally yelled at by the same supervisor, the county attorneys contend in their court papers.
Pewitt testified in a deposition that she suffered heart palpitations due to alleged “consistent aggression,” but when asked to provide details about her condition and the care sought, the plaintiff could not describe when the palpitations started or ended, the county attorneys state in their pleadings.
Pewitt was hired into the Bureau of Investigation in February 1999 and during her career she has taken part in administrative hearings and provided input regarding lawsuits brought by office employees, as well as defendants in criminal cases, the suit states. The Bureau of Investigation operated like a “(good old) boys club” in which it was stressed that employees would be team players and that one is a “problem” if he or she reports misconduct, sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation or other abuses in the workplace, Pewitt alleges.
Pewitt worked without any problems for the first 10 years, but by 2009, she detected “an environment with workplace hostility, tension, degradation of and disrespect towards women,” she contends
That year, Pewitt obtained a video depicting fictitious law enforcement male and female officers who believed they had won the lottery, in which some of the white women yell and disparage their boss with a pejorative term for gay people, the suit states.
She was alarmed the email went viral and that no one was held accountable, according to her suit.
Pewitt alleges she was groped and inappropriately touched by another bureau employee during a work-related event in 2012, leaving her “shocked and stunned” by behavior she deemed “unwelcome and offensive.”
In another assignment in which she processed Black candidates for Social Security Administration work, Pewitt detected that a manager disfavored Black females, according to her court papers.
“Over the years, she hears complaints about his discriminatory practices in the workplace,” the suit states. “She is told that white males are overheard stating, `We’re going to take this bureau back.”’
Other Black employees later complained to her that management was “indifferent” toward them, according to the suit, which says Pewitt found that she worked in “a hostile work environment where harassment, discrimination and retaliation against women and against complainers” occurred.