FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 25, 1995

LOS ANGELES -- As jurors were about to return a verdict, the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Police Department officials agreed to pay $165,000 to a former female officer raped by a male colleague on Police Academy grounds in 1990 in a case that symbolizes persistent sexual harassment and gender equity shortcomings in the LAPD. If the settlement is not approved by the L.A. City Council, a jury verdict reached in the case will be unsealed.

The agreement to compensate former Officer Suzanne Campbell came late Tuesday afternoon, on the 19th day of a jury trial in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California on Campbell's behalf. The lawsuit is but one of five similar cases revealing a pattern of chronic sexual discrimination and harassment within the department. In May of 1994, the ACLU, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund and the law firm of Litt and Marquez filed a class-action lawsuit against the LAPD for widespread discrimination against female employees.

The lawsuit raised broad questions about the failure of the LAPD, city officials and former Chief Daryl F. Gates to gain control over pervasive sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault within the LAPD. Under Chief Willie L. Williams, the LAPD has implemented some changes in its sexual harassment policies and treatment of female officers, but the progress has been far slower than the circumstances require.

The Campbell litigation grew out of an incident in September 1990, when Campbell was followed into a women's bathroom by a male officer who sexually assaulted her when she was ill from intoxication. The incident occurred after both officers had been drinking in a bar at the Police Academy lounge.

After a nearly year-long campaign by Campbell to force department officials to respond to the rape appropriately, the LAPD terminated the male officer.

However, the action came after Gates reversed a recommendation of the command staff at Pacific Division that Campbell's assailant be subjected to a Board of Rights disciplinary hearing. Gates, instead, found all allegations against the male officer to be unsustained.

"Resolution of this lawsuit sends a powerful message that the LAPD must fulfill its legal obligation to provide a safe working environment for all of its employees," said Carol Sobel, ACLU senior staff counsel and the lawyer who represented Campbell

Campbell is one of almost two dozen current or former LAPD female officers represented by the ACLU in actions against the department stemming from separate sexual harassment episodes. "Hopefully, the process of change, which has long been overdue, will be hastened by this settlement with Suzanne Campbell," Sobel said.

When Campbell met with department officials to seek reconsideration of Gates' decision to drop charges against the male officer, she was told no reconsideration was possible. Later, the commander of the Internal Affairs Division, in a meeting with Campbell, said it was LAPD policy not to take disciplinary action in "one-on-one" sexual harassment incidents. Campbell also said that LAPD personnel said that she would be disciplined for having sex on department property and excessive drinking if she persisted in her attempts to have her assailant disciplined.

Testifying in the court case in the days before the city made its settlement offer, Campbell described repeated incidents of harassment by male officers while she was on duty, starting when she joined the department in 1987 until she left patrol in 1992.

"Aggressive recruitment campaigns targeting women are hollow if female recruits meet bigotry, animosity and abuse when they join the team," said Ramona Ripston, ACLU Executive Director. "From the Chief on down, LAPD personnel must know that discrimination and assault against women officers cannot be condoned."

Campbell, who was named officer of the year for Rampart Division in 1993 and received national recognition by the White House and the National Association of Police Chief Executives for the community-based policing program that she developed, resigned from the department in August of 1994. She is now a full-time mother raising her eight-month-old son.