A Black investigator who alleges she’s been harassed in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office will get a trial on two of her five allegations, a judge decided in a mixed ruling on the county’s motion to dismiss the case.
Sgt. Karen Pewitt’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges that the Bureau of Investigation bullies personnel to muzzle their equity complaints. On Friday, Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis dismissed three of Pewitt’s harassment and hostile work environment causes of action. But the judge let stand the plaintiff’s two other harassment-based and hostile work environment allegations.
Pewitt was hired into the Bureau of Investigation in February 1999. 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.
She filed the long-running suit in April 2020 and originally included multiple claims and defendants, including former District Attorney Jackie Lacey. The case was previously pared of some claims and trial is scheduled Sept. 14. In a sworn declaration, Pewitt said employees are discouraged from complaining about inequities in the workplace.
“Reporting misconduct, equity violations or other violations of the employer’s policies was frowned upon because there is a code of silence,” Pewitt said. “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.
According to the county’s court papers, all of Pewitt’s allegations that were the subject of the dismissal motion are barred by the statute of limitations.
“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.
Although Pewitt alleges that her supervisors yelled at her because she is a Black female, she acknowledged that a Hispanic male co-worker was treated the same way, 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.