A deputy in Marin County has launched a lawsuit against his own sheriff’s department in California, alleging he was discriminated against because he is Black.
According to The Mercury News, David Lundie alleges that during his 11 years on the force, senior leadership with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office subjected him to a variety of offenses, including racist tokenization and microaggressions, holding him to standards of conduct different from deputies’ and giving him biased performance assessments.
“This lawsuit should serve as a wake-up call,” said Lundie’s lawyer, Jennifer Reisch, in a statement, according to Mercury News. “Racial discrimination is rampant throughout Marin institutions and culture, and the Sheriff’s Office is no exception.”
Lundie claims his superiors harassed him when he requested and received 4 1/2 weeks of stress-related sick leave under the California Family Rights Act.
According to the suit, he was still scheduled to work a shift despite telling the county’s personnel department that he would be taking a leave of absence starting Dec. 2, 2022. When he didn’t show up, Lundie alleged, he received harassing texts and calls, plus got a supervisor’s unexpected visit to his home.
Five Black deputies are part of the sheriff’s office’ roster of more than 200 employees, and two joined the agency less than a year ago, The Mercury News reported. Just under 3 percent of the county’s population is Black.
Lundie’s lawsuit alleges that no Black individual has held a position above the rank of sergeant since Lt. Cheryl Fisher left in 2016 after 30 years of service.
Despite obtaining excellent marks in evaluation interviews, Lundie alleges, he applied for sergeant seven times without success.
In 2016, when former Sheriff Robert Doyle met with several captains and lieutenants to decide which one to promote to sergeant, the suit claims, Sheriff Jamie Scardina, then a captain, and his brother Craig Scardina, who has since been promoted from lieutenant to captain, called Lundie a “slug” and “lazy.”
They allegedly berated Lundie for devoting too much time to reading to children in Sausalito rather than performing police duties. The suit contends that the Scardina brothers’ derogatory remarks were untrue and based on racist tropes and stereotypes about Black people.
The lawsuit also cites an incident from July 2016 in which Lundie was spotted dozing off in his patrol car and received a written reprimand.
Lundie was surprised he got the write-up, with his suit alleging that white deputies had overslept, dozed off at work and showed up for duty late or not at all without receiving the same admonishment.
After the incident, Lundie informed Lt. Keith Boyd he was separating from the mother of his children. The suit claims that soon after his chat with Boyd, stories of Lundie’s “messy life” started to spread inside the department.
Lundie was disciplined, the suit contends, for using his cellphone excessively, calling in sick 20 hours before a shift to tend to his ill daughter, mocking COVID-19 safety precautions by donning a face shield and a mask during a meeting and showing up to work late due to traffic.
On Aug. 26, Lundie submitted a discrimination complaint to the state Civil Rights Department, a prerequisite for initiating a lawsuit.
Marin County Counsel Brian Washington and Sheriff Scardina declined to address the lawsuit since they had not seen a copy. However, Washington asserted county officials would carefully examine it upon receipt and provide a court response.
“The county is an equal opportunity employer,” Washington contended, The Mercury News reported, “with no tolerance for discrimination or racism.”
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Marin County Superior Court, asks for an unspecified amount for compensatory and punitive damages, along with lost wages.
“Make no mistake about it: this is not an isolated incident,” Lundie’s lawyer Reisch said, The Mercury News reported, “and the Marin County Sheriff’s Office needs to urgently revamp its practices and procedures to put an end to the racial bias that permeates its culture.”
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