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Brief Collection, LDF Court Filings. Tipton-Whittingham v. City of Los Angeles Plaintiffs' Evidentiary Proof in Support of Consent Decree, 1996. 83087a41-c69a-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/cddce9ac-5e14-413f-aad9-0539f39d84f6/tipton-whittingham-v-city-of-los-angeles-plaintiffs-evidentiary-proof-in-support-of-consent-decree. Accessed August 19, 2025.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Barrett S. Litt, State Bar #45527 Anna Y. Park. State Bar #164242 LAW OFFICE OF LITT & MARQUEZ A LAW CORPORATION 3435 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1100 Los Angeles. California 90010-1912 Telephone: (213) 386-31 14 Constance L. Rice, State Bar #153372 Bill Lann Lee, State Bar #108452 Darci Burrell, State Bar #180467 NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 315 West Ninth Street, Suite 208 Los Angeles, CA 90015 Telephone: (213)624-2405 Carol A. Sobel. State Bar #84483 Mark D. Rosenbaum, State Bar #59940 Jon W. Davidson, State Bar #89301 Silvia R. Argueta, State Bar #144400 ACLU FOUNDATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 1616 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90026 Telephone: (213)977-9500 James K. Hahn CITY ATTORNEY FOR THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES Robert Cramer Assistant City Attorney 1800 City Hall East 200 North Main Street Los Angeles. CA 90012 Telephone: (213) 485-1429 Attorneys for Defendants Attorneys for Defendants UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA TERRY TIPTON-WHITTINGHAM, et ah, Plaintiffs, Case No.: CV-94-3240 (RC) PLAINTIFFS’ EVIDENTIARY PROOF IN SUPPORT OF CONSENT DECREE CONSENT DECREE. vs. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, et ah, Defendants. DATE: TIME: COURT: 1. Although the defendants deny any liability in this case, it is agreed that, should the case be tried, the plaintiffs would present substantial evidence in support of their claims, the nature of which is partially outlined in the following paragraphs of this Section. 2. Plaintiffs would present evidence - through statistical data, the opinions of experts, and testimony of class members - that the plaintiffs contend would demonstrate that the Doc: 36653 Client: 097B File:TTP01!.DOC 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 City and the Department have discriminatorily recruited women and minority applicants for LAPD officer positions; that their entry level appointment procedures, involving written examinations, oral interviews and other screening devices, have had an unjustified adverse impact in some circumstances on minorities and women; and that their Academy, probationary and field training procedures have had an unjustified adverse impact in some circumstances on minorities and women. This evidence would include: a) Although women represent 43% of the Los Angeles County civilian labor force, and the City Council has voluntarily set as a long term goal recruiting women at that level, the highest percentage of women recruited as applicants since 1990 has been 27%. Men pass the LAPD physical agility test at a 99% rate; women pass it at a rate of 71%, and the disparity is statistically significant. The attrition rate after admission to the Police Academy and through probationary field training has been 18% for women during the years 1990-95, a significantly higher rate than that for white males. b) Not withstanding their consistent availability and demographic trends, such as the participation of African Americans in the military substantially above their percentage in the population, the percentage of African Americans recruited to the LAPD in proportion to overall LAPD applications has dropped 40% in the last five years; this recruitment pattern has impeded the hiring of African Americans. Not only has the rate of application significantly dropped, but, since 1990, African American appointments to the Department (i.e., acceptance into the Police Academy) have fallen significantly below anticipated rates; for example, in 1995-96, the African American appointment rate was only one-half of the African American applicant rate, amounting to only 7% of the appointments. The attrition rate after admission to the Police Academy and through probationary field training has been 15% for African Americans, a significantly higher rate than that for white males, and has been 25% for African American women, dramatically higher than for any other identifiable group. Doc: 38653 Client: 0978 File:TTP01!.DOC 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 22 23 24 25 26 2 7 28 c) Although the current Latino Los Angeles County civilian labor force representation exceeds 40%, Latino application rates to sworn Department positions have never exceeded 35%. d) Although the City projects a current 12% Asian/Pacific Islander Los Angeles County civilian labor force representation, the application rate of Asian/Pacific Islanders to LAPD sworn positions has never exceeded 9%. 3. Departmental promotional surveys of women and minorities and the Department’s Coveted Position Report confirm the underrepresentation of women and minorities in some coveted positions. 4. The Christopher Commission findings in 1991 state that the continuing negativity and biases toward women and minorities and the continuing lack of sensitivity towards issues involving race, ethnicity, and sex throughout the Department. 5. The Blueprint for Implementing Gender Equity in the LAPD by the Women s Advisory Council to the Los Angeles Police Commission (October, 1993) states that the ongoing and pervasive problems of women and women of color in the Department due to gender and race bias. The Blueprint outlines continuing impediments women face in every aspect of life in the Department, including recruitment, promotions, assignments to coveted positions, and the existence of a frequently demeaning and hostile work environment. 6. The Christopher Commission’s supplemental report {In the Course o f Change: The Los Angeles Police Department Five Years After the Christopher Commission, May 30, 1996), states that that continuing pervasive problems are faced by women and minorities in the Department five years after the Christopher Commission’s acknowledgment of the problems, and that very little has changed during that time regarding the Department’s attitude towards women and minorities. Women, particularly women of color, continue to be excluded from highly desirable coveted positions, such as Metropolitan Division, Narcotics Group, and SWAT. 7. Numerous women at all levels within the Department would testifythat discriminatory classifications by the Department prevent women and minorities from competing Doc: 38653 Client: 0978 File:TTP01!.DOC 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 on an equal footing with white male counterparts within the Department, and that the Department has failed to remedy pervasive and systematic hostility towards women and minorities in every part of the LAPD from recruitment and training to promotion to pay-grade advancements and coveted positions. 8. Numerous female officers would testify to being discouraged from applying for highly desirable promotions and coveted positions and for being stereotyped into units that do not lead to positions which allow for future promotions; this testimony would be supported by figures showing the underrepresentation of women in elite positions. There would be testimony from female officers, who. despite impeccable records and with over 25 years in the Department, were discouraged from applying for elite positions, such as Robber)’ Homicide, or applying for promotions such as Lieutenant. They would also testify that women are stereotyped into working in discrete units due to their sex, such as sex crimes, or juvenile and child abuse, and that these positions provide lesser promotional opportunities than do others. They would also testify that white male officers in the Department are preferred for promotions and coveted positions. 9. Numerous civilian and sworn employees in the Department would describe the following evidence of a hostile work environment and a climate of retaliation for those who stand up to it: a) Females have been openly called “tunaboat,” “cunt,” “whore,” “black ghetto whore,” “bitch,” and “slut.” b) Supervisors have openly stated that “women do not belong in the Department.” c) Male officers have strewn open condoms over female officers’ work stations. d) Male officers have drawn breasts and a penis onto photographs of a female officer’s child. e) Male officers have grabbed and groped female employees, and the Department has responded at times by treating the victim, through its discipline and administrative processes, as if she were the perpetrator. Doc: 38653 Client: 0978 File:TTP01I.DOC 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 2 5 26 2 7 28 f) Male officers have raped female employees, and the Department has at times failed to take any action or discipline against the male officer, but rather has subjected the female employee to harassment and scrutiny in violation of her privacy rights. g) The Department has at times charged women officers who were victims of domestic violence with misconduct for having called an outside agency for help while not disciplining her officer husband for his conduct. h) Male officers have at times been subjected to retaliation for objecting to the discriminatory treatment of female officers, up to and including instances of officers’ careers being effectively destroyed as a result. 10. High ranking officials within the Department and the City would testify that many of the problems addressed by this Consent Decree are commonthat neither the Department not the Board of Police Commissioners can fully address and resolve the problems despite their good faith efforts to do so, and that the best w'ay to ensure that these problems are resolved is through court involvement. 11. The following is a brief summary of testimony which would be presented by some class members describing their personal experiences: a) Kathy Age, an African American woman, finished first on the list for promotion to Lieutenant in 1994. Her achievement ignited a concerted campaign by white male subordinates to discredit her and prevent her advancement. The campaign began with an “anonymous” letter from Wilshire Division officers to the Police Commission, alleging that Lt. Age only promoted because she was having an affair with a Commander. Simultaneously, a group of white male sergeants at Foothill Division used the Department discipline system to harass and intimidate Lt. Age by filing more than 11 false complaints of misconduct against her. After 17 months and an investigation by the Department’s EODD, Personnel Division concluded the situation was nothing more than “mutual hostility” and had nothing to do with the fact that Lt. Age is black or female. Despite repeated pleas from Lt. Age, from the area level to the Police Commission, no person within the Los Angeles Police Department intervened to stop the harassment. None of the male officers has been DOC: 36653 Client: 0978 File:TTP01!.DOC 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 disciplined for hisactions. As a result,Lt. Age was unable to prepare for and take the past two examinations for Captain, a test she believes she would have passed readily given the fact that she outscored every other individual on the Lieutenant’s examination. b) From the time Myma Lewis, an African American woman, was a recruit in 1980, when an officer joked about her being raped by a fellow officer on the mandatory ride- along, to death threats made against her by male white officers in Southeast Division, Lewis has been put on the defensive almost daily as a woman and as a woman of color. Lewis is one of a series of black supervisors who found their career advancement blocked when they were assigned to Hollywood Division. In late 1994, Lewis transferred to South Traffic Division, an entity in which female officers had been complaining about harassment by several male sergeants for some time. When several of the women approached her for help shortly after she arrived, Lewis spoke to the Captain about the problem, keeping confidential the complainants’ names. When the Captain failed to respond, Lewis went to the area commander. After that, an investigation began, but instead of focusing on the harassers, the investigation threatened Lewis with misconduct charges if she did not reveal the names of those officers who spoke to her on condition of confidentiality. Off on stress, she found herself surveilled by the Department and subjected to harassive phone calls by command officers at South Traffic. Nearly two years after the initial complaints against two male sergeants, those two officers were finally transferred from South Traffic. c) Catherine Shuman is a white officer who, after joining the LAPD, divorced a white officer and married a black classmate in the Academy. That decision began a series of events, including racist actions by her ex-husband, comments by training staff and command staff about her relationship with her present husband and a campaign to fire or force resignation of the black officer. Just as the turmoil of the Department’s response to her divorce was subsiding, Shuman found herself the target of prototypical sexual harassment by Captain Robert Kurth, her supervisor at West Los Angeles Division. Captain Kurth had been brought into West Los Angeles Division following an investigation into wide-scale patterns of discrimination against female officers at West Los Angeles by male officers, including an Doc: 36653 Client: 0978 File:TTP01I.DOC 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 2 5 26 27 28 informal band called “Men Against Women.” For nearly two years, Kurth, made express, unwanted advances to Officer Shuman, touching her inappropriately, pressing his body to hers, telling her in explicit detail his sexual exploits with other women, and pressuring her into lunch at a hotel with a suggestion for sex after lunch. All during this time, Kurth allowed male officers at West Los Angeles to engage in harassing conduct with impunity and rewarded with a promotion at least one male sergeant who had been transferred only weeks before because of complaints of harassment against him at another unit. d) Cynthia Juarez, a Latinawoman, joined the LAPD in 1983. Recruited to Central Vice Division as its first female officer in 1985, she experienced sexual harassment from male officers pulling her into an elevator and attempting to open her blouse, to sexually suggestive photographs of women posted in the workplace with her face superimposed on them. Juarez was off on stress for three years following an incident in which a male officer dug his hands into her shoulders and forced her breasts to move from side to side, mimicking “a Mexican earthquake.” When she returned to work, she was assigned to a gang unit, where she was met with hostility as the “bitch who filed that sexual harassment complaint.” In a stint at Northeast Division, she was supervised by an individual who repeatedly told her women did not belong on the job. When another female suffered a breakdown in the environment at Northeast, Juarez transferred to another assignment. After approximately nine months, supervisors from Northeast recruited her back, promising a return to the Detective Division and a change in the work environment. Once again, Juarez was met with hostility and isolation. This time, she attempted to address the problem head on. Supervisors dismissed her complaints as insignificant. When a male officer was beaten in the men’s locker room for supporting Juarez, supervisors still did nothing. Finally, more than two months after the beating, Internal Affairs began an investigation. For ten months, until the harassment became too much, Juarez was subjected to isolation, derogatory looks and forced to see her harasser while the LAPD disciplinary process dragged on. The disciplinary process took more than two years to complete. DOC: 38653 Client: 0978 File:TTP01I.DOC 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 2 5 26 27 28 e) For Kathy Simpson, a white woman who joined the LAPD in 1987, discrimination was a constant based on her sex and the fact that she was gender-stereotyped as a small female. She was denied promotions, assignments and, more importantly, commendations that would have been virtually automatic for any male officers with her record of saving fellow officers in difficulty. She also experienced physical and verbal harassment by male officers. In one instance, when she complained to the area Captain, his only response was to leave her alone in a closed office to “work out her problems” with the male. When she reported inappropriate race and sex-based comments made by a co-worker about a black female supervisor, she found herself the target of retaliation by command staff on down. Suddenly, she was subjected to four personnel complaints for misconduct within a matter of months. In one, she was charged with damaging Department property in a situation where she rescued several officers pinned down by an armed suspect. The “property damage” occurred when the transmission in her police car abruptly shifted out of gear, sending the car backwards into a fence and pinning her head between the car door and fence. When she and a partner responded to a “hot call,” no other officers responded to their call for back up, conducting routine traffic stops instead. Her calls to command staff resulted in inquiries about her sexual orientation. The male officer who made the racist and sexist comments received a slap on the wrist and a scheduled promotion to Sergeant. f) Carl Tomlinson, a white male, is a 22-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. Presently at the rank of sergeant, he previously served in the LAPD’s elite METRO unit. Tomlinson is married to named plaintiff Zina Tomlinson, a white female who is also an LAPD officer. When Zina Tomlinson was subjected to sexual remarks and other inappropriate conduct at South Traffic Division, Sgt. Tomlinson encouraged her to report the misconduct to the Captain. Zina Tomlinson was one of several female officers who had complained repeatedly of sexual harassment by male supervisors in the unit. When the Captain refused to take the complaint, and, instead, pressured Zina Tomlinson to transfer out of South Traffic, Carl Tomlinson sought the assistance of the Department’s Women’s Coordinator, who told him it was none of his business. At the time that he was trying to get Doc: 36653 Client: 0978 File:TTP01!.DOC 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 22 23 24 25 26 2 7 28 the Department to respond to his wife’s complaint, Tomlinson went on loan to Internal Affairs. Despite the fact that he did well on the loan and that he was told he would be selected for the unit, when this lawsuit was filed, Tomlinson was taken aside by a lieutenant in IA and told he would not get the position because of his wife’s participation in the lawsuit. Respectfully submitted, DATED: October 1996. LITT & MARQUEZ DATED: October__, 1996. By: Barrett S. Litt Attorneys for Plaintiffs ACLU FOUNDATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DATED: October__, 1996. By. Carol Sobel Attorneys for Plaintiffs NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. DATED: October 1996. By. Constance L. Rice Attorneys for Plaintiffs and Plaintiff Intervenors MEXICAN-AMER1CAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND By___________________________ Thomas Saenz Attorneys for Plaintiff Intervenors DATED-October ,1996. ASIAN-PACIFIC AMERICAN LEGAL — CENTER By. Bonnie Tang Attorneys for Plaintiff Intervenors Doc: 38653 Client: 0978 File:TTP011.DOC 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 22 23 24 2 5 26 27 28 DATED: October ,1996. JAMES K. HAHN — LOS ANGELES CITY ATTORNEY CHARLES DICKERSON ASSISTANT CITY ATTORNEY ROBERT CRAMER DEPUTY CITY ATTORNEY By_____________________ Robert Cramer Attorneys for Defendants Doc: 36653 Client: 0976 File:TTP01!.DOC 10