A female Redondo Beach police officer is suing the city, alleging her career opportunities have been impaired by retaliation she suffered for speaking out against gender and disability discrimination as well as intimidation tactics used to dissuade her from further complaining.
Catherine Garcia’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges gender discrimination, gender and sexual harassment, retaliation and failure to prevent harassment, discrimination and retaliation. She seeks unspecified damages.
“Plaintiff has been harassed and discriminated against based on her sex/gender and disability and has been continually retaliated against for engaging in protected activity by opposing this conduct,” the suit states.
A representative of the Redondo Beach City Attorney’s Office did not reply to a request for comment on the suit brought Friday.
Garcia was sworn in as an RBPD officer in June 2008 and has worked a number of different assignments, including crisis negotiator and sex crimes, the suit states. Two years after she joined the force, she suffered a staph infection while arresting a man armed with a knife, according to the complaint.
Garcia acquired Crohn’s disease in 2013 and had complications from her medications, the suit further states. After a medical leave, she returned to light-duty work in October 2015 and later became pregnant, prompting a maternity leave in which she came back to her job in March 2017, the suit states.
Despite having extensive experience and having served as an acting sergeant, Garcia was not promoted to a permanent position in 2019, the suit states. She also was ordered to continue training an officer whose live-in girlfriend was constantly exposed to the coronavirus at the outset of the pandemic, according to the suit.
Garcia was subsequently removed from training further officers and later filed a challenge to the decision, the suit states. She later was denied various “premium” positions she sought, including school resource officer, which she believes was in retaliation for filing the department’s decision regarding her training officer work, according to the suit.
Garcia eventually won her challenge and the city was ordered to pay her back pay and benefits she would have received had she not been taken out of the training officer position, the suit states.
A month later, after testing positive for the coronavirus, a captain ordered Garcia to fill out an extensive and invasive questionnaire that was not given to all other department employees who also had acquired COVID-19, according to the suit, which further states that she decided not to complete the form because her workers’ compensation attorney advised her not to.
Although Garcia was promoted to detective in 2022, she was subjected to harassment and inappropriate comments by a male colleague, the suit states. The plaintiff also was subjected to differential treatment because she was given an unfair workload as the only detective who was assigned other detectives’ cases, according to her complaint.
When Garcia complained, she was given a written reprimand which she signed and said she would no longer speak out because nothing was being done by her supervisors anyway, according to the suit, which further states the plaintiff was placed on medical leave by her doctor because of stress. Garcia is currently on “injured on duty” status.
Garcia’s career has been “materially and adversely affected, and irreparably harmed and damaged, by the conduct of the defendants,” according to the suit, which additionally states she has experienced lost earnings and emotional distress.