Three Black female officers with a sheriff’s department in Washington state say in a civil lawsuit, filed in Pierce County Superior Court, that they’ve endured racist harassment for decades from colleagues whom they accuse of asking Africa-born employees if they ate “zebra” for lunch and saying Black protesters “should be shot or run over.”
The three officers — Lt. Charla James-Hutchison, Sgt. Dione Alexander and Sgt. Sabrina Braswell-Bouyer — are the highest-ranking Black women in Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and have each been with the department for more than 25 years. In the suit, they accuse “top echelons” of the department of participating in or ignoring racial and gender-based discrimination and harassment, and of allowing a “culture of animosity towards African Americans and women to grow and fester.”
Meaghan M. Driscoll, an attorney representing the three officers, said the women have suffered emotional distress, damage to their reputations and more. The officers have not specified how much they are seeking in damages.
“It’s created stress and anxiety for these women. They go to work with just an overwhelming feeling of dread,” Driscoll said. “They’re bringing this suit now because they’re at a critical point where the environment needs to end. The county hasn’t done anything in the decades that they’ve worked there. It’s untenable to go forward in the environment as it stands.”
A spokesperson for the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Adam Faber, said the county “generally does not comment on pending litigation.”
The women, all in their mid-50s, said that the harassment began shortly after they were hired, according to the suit. James-Hutchinson said that she was told by a department official that she had been hired in 1989 only to “fill a quota,” implying that she was not qualified for the job, the suit states. Alexander, hired in 1995, said that when she was promoted in the department, she was told it was only because she is Black. Braswell-Bouyer has been with the department since 1990, according to The News Tribune of Tacoma.
The women allege that Alexander and James-Hutchison were referred to as “angry Black” women and James Hutchison was once asked if her hair left a grease mark on the wall.
The women also say they witnessed white colleagues refer to Black people in the county using the N-word; tell employees to “go back to where they came from” if they did not like what’s happening in the United States; call employees “thugs” because of their hairstyles; and perform the “heil Hitler” salute during department trainings, according to the suit. One woman said she heard a colleague say the Covid-19 vaccine should be “tested” on Black people before white people, according to the document.
“The list of offensive behavior condoned by PCSD is too numerous to fully detail,” the suit states.
Driscoll said department officials changed Alexander’s job duties in retaliation after she complained about harassment and tried to help other minority women with their own complaints. As a result, she filed a complaint internally to the county’s Equal Employment Opportunity unit. The women filed individual complaints to the EEO on several occasions, according to the suit and Driscoll. But, Driscoll said, the complaints were not adequately investigated or resolved. An EEO specialist with the county did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
“The county hasn’t done anything in the decades that they’ve worked there. They’ve been ignoring the complaints and, more recently, it’s allowed them to be retaliated against when they bring it up,” Driscoll said, adding that the women’s subordinates have started filing “baseless” claims of harassment against them.
There are 12 Black women, including the three officers, working for the sheriff’s Department. Forty-seven of the department’s 614 sworn employees are Black, according to The News Tribune.
The suit, filed on Nov. 1, comes after Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer was charged with one count of false reporting and one count of making a false or misleading statement to a public servant. The misdemeanor charges against him stem from an incident on Jan. 27, when Troyer followed Sedrick Altheimer, a newspaper delivery driver, along his route and called 911 claiming that Altheimer had threatened to kill him. Troyer has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Troyer, who faces nearly a year in jail and a $5,000 fine if he is convicted, has said the charges are “a blatant and politically motivated anti-cop hit job” by Ferguson, the state attorney general, according to The Seattle Times. NBC News’s request to Troyer for comment on the charges against him as well as the civil suit went unanswered.
Troyer was recently added to the county’s “Brady List” of witnesses with credibility issues, according to The Seattle Times. The Washington BLM Alliance and state lawmakers have urged him to resign.
“Recent incidents with Troyer, those are just other examples of the environment that’s going on,” Driscoll said. “It’s a top-down problem that’s being allowed to generate in terms of a racially discriminatory and hostile environment.”
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