Los Angeles County lawyers want a judge to dismiss Sheriff Robert Luna and a former high-ranking department official as defendants in a lawsuit brought by an Aero Bureau captain who alleges she has been subjected to racial and sex discrimination.
In court papers filed Monday with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Doreen B. Boxer in advance of an Aug. 11 hearing, the county’s lawyers argue that neither Luna nor retired Assistant Sheriff Holly Francisco have anything to do with plaintiff Blanca Arevalo’s claims, in which the Latina captain alleges two white male supervisors isolated her from the workplace and held meetings with a white bureau lieutenant without her knowledge.
“Plaintiff decided to have this matter stretched into an overkill of including Sheriff Robert Luna and (former) Assistant Sheriff Holly Francisco to say that they harassed plaintiff because she is Hispanic and female,” the county attorneys state in their pleadings.
Arevalo’s suit is devoid of any evidence that Luna, who also is Latino, was ever in a meeting with her, interfered with her work, or otherwise had any knowledge of the workplace at Aero Bureau, the county attorneys further state in their court papers.
Although Francisco was the direct supervisor of one of the other two individual defendants in Arevalo’s suit, there is nothing in the lawsuit that supports the plaintiff’s assertion that Francisco harassed her, the county attorneys’ court papers state.
According to Arevalo’s lawsuit, she was hired in 1999 and previously worked in the Twin Towers jail while also holding such jobs as providing security in three county courthouses and as a watch commander at the Norwalk station. Cerritos residents commended her for her show of restraint during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd, the suit states.
Arevalo also served as an aide to an assistant sheriff and was promoted to captain in May 2022, the suit states. Arevalo is the commanding officer of the Aero Bureau and is charged with the unit’s fiscal management, personnel administration, operational efficiency and risk management.
However, upon Arevalo’s arrival to the Aero Bureau, the Special Operations Division’s chief and the plaintiff’s supervising commander, both white, “quickly established” that Arevalo, a Latina, was “captain of the Aero Bureau in name only,” telling her she was not to make any fiscal, resource or personnel allocation changes without their approval, the suit states. The commander reports to the chief and both are co-defendants in the suit.
Arevalo also was excluded from involvement in efforts to acquire new helicopters, although white males were allowed to attend such discussions, the suit states. The pair also assigned a white male lieutenant to the Aero Bureau even though the unit already had one lieutenant and that was all that was required by staffing, according to the suit, which further states the commander told her to “deal with it” and that the second lieutenant was a “gift” to her.
When Arevalo expressed concerns about the second lieutenant’s hiring to the commander, he made an implied threat to her by saying that was “how people get moved,” the suit alleges.
Over several months, the commander “isolated plaintiff, refused to speak with her, circumvented plaintiff’s authority” and directly issued orders to the second lieutenant and had him attend secret Aero Bureau meetings, the suit states.
Through their alleged inaction, the LASD hierarchy “permitted and condoned the rampant racism and sexism” Arevalo contends she suffered and the chief and commander, who were not disciplined, have only felt more emboldened, according to the suit brought Jan. 29.
The second lieutenant went on military leave in August 2023, the suit states.