One yr after a Los Angeles police officer was charged with six misdemeanor counts for allegedly sending sexually specific photographs and movies of his spouse to LAPD colleagues and different males, the lady, additionally a police officer, is suing town of Los Angeles.
The lady’s lawsuit, filed Wednesday, prices the division with sexual harassment, whistleblower retaliation and failure to take all affordable steps to stop sexual harassment and retaliation. She seeks unspecified damages.
A consultant for town lawyer’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The plaintiff’s husband, Brady Lamas, is awaiting trial on six counts of disorderly conduct by distributing a private intimate image, in response to a felony grievance filed in Los Angeles County Superior Courtroom final December.
The grievance alleges that Lamas, 46, handed “round sexually specific pictures and sexually specific movies” of his spouse to different LAPD officers.
“My very own husband is a predator, and he preyed on me. I’d have most popular that he punched me within the face,” she wrote when making use of for a restraining order in opposition to Lamas.
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His actions, she claims, led to her being sexually harassed by different officers within the division, conduct that she alleges has continued during the last yr.
Two officers, whom she claims made harassing feedback, weren’t transferred, and in response to the go well with, the LAPD did nothing to make sure that the pictures would not be shared by any of the officers who had obtained them.
“The division merely didn’t care sufficient to do all that was crucial to guard plaintiff,” the go well with states, thereby encouraging a hostile work setting and damaging the plaintiff’s profession.
Recognized within the unique charging doc by her first identify and final preliminary, she has labored for the LAPD for 14 years and in the middle of her profession has acquired quite a few commendations and awards.
She initially came across the express pictures in January 2021 when she noticed a gaggle chat on her husband’s cellphone by which Lamas shared nude photographs and movies with a person she didn’t know.
The invention, she wrote, helped clarify the sexually harassing feedback that had been directed towards her, which she didn’t perceive. On the time, the feedback appeared “uncommon,” however she didn’t know in regards to the pictures Lamas had despatched by textual content message, WhatsApp and the messaging app Kik.
Upon discovering the pictures on Lamas’ cellphone, she felt “frozen and in worry,” she wrote within the submitting. The pictures had left her humiliated. Lamas was a “predator” whose actions have been “tantamount to a sexual assault.”
She alleged he had surreptitiously taken photographs of her bare physique throughout a number of visits at a physician’s workplace after she had breast augmentation surgical procedure. She claimed he then shared the pictures with different males, referring to them as “earlier than and after pics,” in response to the submitting.
A number of the male LAPD workers who had acquired the express pictures would strategy her at work, watching her “intently” and making feedback equivalent to “Brady is a fortunate man” and “He doesn’t know the way good he has it,” in response to the submitting.
She reported Lamas to her supervisor, filed a report with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division station in Santa Clarita and was interviewed by the Inner Affairs Division.
On the time, the LAPD issued a press release saying it was cooperating with the Sheriff’s Division and the district lawyer’s workplace and was “troubled by the officer’s alleged off-duty conduct which doesn’t replicate the values of the Los Angeles Police Division.”
But she stated she was afraid to return to work and predicted that the harassment would proceed.
“What’s worse is that this humiliation will hold repeating, maybe ceaselessly, as a result of the non-public footage and graphic movies at the moment are within the arms of strangers and a number of co-workers on the LAPD,” she wrote.
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The case is the newest in a collection of explicit-photo-sharing scandals to rock the division in recent times.
Town paid out $1.5 million in 2020 to settle a lawsuit by an LAPD detective who accused a fellow officer of beating her and threatening to share sexually specific pictures he had secretly taken if she tried to finish their relationship.
And in September, a jury awarded an LAPD captain $4 million in damages after she sued town over a nude {photograph} that was doctored to appear like her and shared across the division.
This story initially appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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