SANTA CRUZ — A former police officer is suing the city and the Santa Cruz Police Department for allegedly failing to protect her from workplace retaliation and harassment.
The litigant, who filed the civil suit in December with Santa Cruz County Superior Court under the pseudonym “Jane Doe” to protect her identity, was one of four victims of now-fired and convicted officer David Gunter‘s sexual advances at two separate parties in late 2017. According to a Santa Cruz County Superior Court-filed complaint dated Dec. 11, Jane Doe was targeted by her co-workers after making complaints against Gunter to a superior officer, the city Human Relations Department and later a Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office investigator. Police Chief Andy Mills and HR Director Lisa Murphy, she said, then failed to take steps to protect her from subsequent workplace harassment. Mills took the helm of the department on July 31, 2017, less than six months before the initial sexual batteries.
“Chief Mills allowed the female victims to be treated with a lack of professionalism and dignity that persisted for months,” the lawsuit complaint states. “His lack of concern for sexual violence against women under his watch perpetuated an environment of tolerance amongst the ranks. To this day, the major lapse in critical oversight by Chief Mills has yet to be addressed or corrected.”
Mills, reached Friday, was unable to discuss the specifics of the lawsuit. He said, however, that the department promptly and thoroughly investigates allegations made to his department, taking steps to remedy problems or inappropriate activities that subsequently arise.
“We have strict policies in place to protect our employees against discrimination, harassment, retaliation or any abuse of conduct and we take these allegations very seriously,” Mills said.
Sexual assault
Gunter, a 19-year veteran of the force and past police union president, was convicted in April on four counts of misdemeanor battery in a reduced plea requiring two years of probation and six months of house arrest. Gunter, son of Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter, was dismissed from the Santa Cruz Police Department on May 11, 2018, prior to when criminal filings were made against him by the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office, in November 2018. Some redacted details of the department’s internal investigation into Gunter’s actions have been posted online to the police “transparency portal” page. A recently instated state-required public disclosure mandate for law enforcement agencies relates to just one of four battery victims, a civilian who also was a former sworn peer. Details of the investigation related to the other three victims, who were active female officers at the time, are exempted from disclosure and not disclosed on the city website.
Mills, asked how the department has responded to underlying issues in the wake of Gunter’s sexual battery, said personnel regularly receive training, in conjunction with the Human Resources Department, on the city’s existing workplace conduct policies and procedures.
“On top of that, I met with almost every female officer in our department to check in with them personally and ask them questions to make sure that I’m seeing things clearly, clear-eyed, from their perspectives,” Mills said. “And on top of that, we also have formed a woman’s group here in the department, where they’re able to meet with one another, discuss issues that are common amongst women and the law enforcement, and regularly send people to training and to conferences to, again, understand what we can do to improve how we work with women in the public space, here.”
Attorney Andrea Justo, whose San Jose-based firm Costanzo Law Firm APC is representing the unnamed plaintiff, said in a recent interview that the lawsuit was “very much in the preliminary stages.”
“This is really about a case where the city and the police department could have taken various measures to protect our client, but unfortunately that didn’t happen,” Justo said. “We’re just really hopeful that the city and the police department take this issue seriously.”
Female employees
The civil suit also alleges that several female employees tendered their resignation after the April 2018 union meeting, leaving the law enforcement field altogether, and further, that more than a dozen female police workers have left the department in the past two years.
Justo said she does not know what has happened since her client resigned from the police department in July, some five years after she was hired, but said she hoped the lawsuit may have sparked some “progressive movements toward change” in terms of how they protect their officers from harassment, discrimination and retaliation.
Mills, asked about the department’s female employee turnover, was unable to immediately confirm or deny the allegation Friday afternoon, saying it required further research. He said, however, that of the police department’s 122 employees — sworn officers and support staff — 30 are women. According to Murphy, the city Human Resources director, Santa Cruz Police Department employs nine sworn female officers, including one sergeant, out of the department’s total 81 sworn officers — personnel counted up through Mills’ position. At the end of 2015, according to an internal officer seniority list, the department also had nine female officers out of 91 total sworn personnel.
Retaliation
Jane Doe’s court filing singled out a particular example of her experience, when the Police Union voted in April 2018 to maintain an on-leave Gunter as the organization’s president and its acting head allegedly yelled at her for voicing disagreement with the decision, an example of how “the pervasive SCPD culture views sexual misconduct by one of its own.” The filing also includes numerous other examples of alleged harassment and retaliation, ranging from stare-downs and failure to allow special-duty promotion to peers not responding to Jane Doe’s back-up requests and precipitously leaving her alone at a crime scene.
Santa Cruz City Attorney Tony Condotti said the city is using outside special legal counsel to handle the case and declined to be interviewed for this story, saying the city does not comment on pending litigation.
In December 2018, Jane Doe filed a state Department of Fair Employee and Housing complaint related to her allegations of workplace retaliation due to a complaint she filed against Gunter, a grievance later denied by City Manager Martín Bernal based on an outside consultant’s investigation. The plaintiff then appealed the decision to Assistant City Manager Laura Schmidt, who was at the time serving in an interim role. Schmidt denied the plaintiff’s appeal in a letter dated July 25, according to court filings.
Schmidt wrote that, based on her review of the evidence, she “did not find enough evidence using the ‘preponderance of evidence’ standard to overturn or adjust the previous determinations,” meaning the plaintiff’s evidence did not outweigh evidence on the other side.
The lawsuit is scheduled for its first court hearing before Judge John Gallagher on April 14.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the sworn-staffing count from 2015.