Reversing a prior ruling, a judge says a Los Angeles police officer who along with five colleagues says he experienced retaliation after speaking out about commanders allegedly enforcing illegal quotas can take his case to trial.
On Feb. 13, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Small heard the city’s motion to dismiss all claims by all plaintiffs. He took the issues under submission and ruled in March that all but Officer Raul Uribe could proceed to trial. The judge heard arguments on Uribe’s motion to be reinstated as a plaintiff on May 8, took the issues under submission and ruled in favor of Uribe on Tuesday.
“The court has concluded that it was mistaken in ruling that Uribe failed to present evidence showing a disputed issue of material fact on the causation element of his whistleblower retaliation claim; i.e., that the city took an adverse employment action against him as a result of whistleblower-protected activity in which Uribe engaged or in which the city anticipated that Uribe would engage.”
The judge referred to an alleged effort by the LAPD to punish those whom the LAPD anticipated would speak out publicly about what Uribe and others contend is an unlawful department campaign to increase arrests of reputed gang members.
“Uribe’s whistleblower retaliation claim thus can proceed to trial along with those of other plaintiffs in this litigation,” Small wrote.
The lead plaintiff is Officer Samantha Fiedler. She and the other officers contend that management imposed career-impairing actions against them, including taking their guns and badges away and assigning them to home duty. Fiedler was the first to sue when she brought her complaint in August 2020 before all the suits were combined into one.
The other plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Uribe and Officers Mario Fernandez, Julio Garcia, Rene Braga and John Walker.
In their court papers, the plaintiffs’ attorneys maintained Small was wrong in his initial ruling to remove Uribe as a plaintiff in the case because there was a reasonable inference that the department believed Uribe could disclose an alleged directive to arrest more gang members.
“Plaintiff submits that the court erred because the evidence presented supports such an inference and a triable issue therefore exists,” the officers’ attorneys’ contend.
The officers also presented evidence that before Jan. 2, 2020, supervisors specifically warned officers in their platoon that if they complained about the arrest recap directives, they would be punished,” according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ court papers.
Fiedler, who was a member of the LAPD Metropolitan Division, contended in a sworn declaration that management for years enforced an unofficial quota system rewarding officers who identified and arrested many alleged gang members and punishing those who failed to do so.
Some of Fiedler’s fellow plaintiffs were charged with deliberately misidentifying people as gang members, but a judge later dismissed the case against them. Fiedler, the daughter and sister of LAPD officers, subsequently obtained a law degree and moved out of state in order to “stay afloat financially and to find a new identity outside of the stress, retaliation and things that kick the LAPD dust back up in my life,” she said.
The City Attorney’s Office maintained Fiedler testified during a deposition that no one told her she needed to increase the number of gun seizures she produced or that she needed to increase the number of arrests she made.
Trial of the case is scheduled for June 8.