LOS ANGELES (CNS) – A former Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team member sued the city Tuesday, alleging she was denied a promotion in the unit in retaliation for telling Internal Affairs investigators that a small group of members showed favoritism to those loyal to them and maligned the reputations of those reluctant to use deadly force.
Lt. Jennifer Grasso’s Los Angeles Superior Court whistleblower retaliation suit seeks unspecified damages. A representative for the City Attorney’s Office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Grasso was hired in October 1995 and in June 2008 became a member of the SWAT team, the suit states.
“SWAT is the crown jewel of the LAPD,” the suit states.
In late 2018, the Internal Affairs unit began an investigation into SWAT based on an anonymous complaint and Grasso was among those interviewed and she disclosed that a small number of SWAT members called “plus ones” were allowed to regularly make decisions normally hired for higher-ranking officers, according to the suit.
Those few SWAT members manipulated SWAT school scenarios in order to allow officers they preferred to pass the school and get into SWAT and to exclude those they disliked, according to the suit, which also alleges that favoritism played a role in who received overtime pay.
The “plus ones” also maligned the reputations of SWAT officers who did not use deadly force when they could have on mentally ill suspects, the suit further alleges.
Grasso also told Internal Affairs that the LAPD had a history of being more lenient on SWAT officers accused of misconduct compared to those on patrol, according to the suit, which further states that the plaintiff left SWAT in the fall of 2018 after being promoted to sergeant.
A SWAT lieutenant who obtained a copy of the investigation began to disparage Grasso and 55-year-old Sgt. Timothy Colomey, another SWAT member who in December was awarded $3.5 million by a jury in a separate suit against the city in which he alleged some unit leaders acted like a “SWAT mafia.”
In September 2019, the same lieutenant told a large group of SWAT officers that Grasso was an “enemy” who left the platoon and that every time he read a copy of the investigation in which she was interviewed it raised his blood pressure and that he “could not believe that there were people who had used their (Internal Affairs) interviews as a `couch session’ to vent about the platoon.”
Grasso promoted to lieutenant in March 2022. She considered returning to SWAT and twice applied for an officer-in-charge position when the incumbent lieutenant in the unit retired, but was turned down both times despite her qualifications an she believes the department’s actions were retaliatory and contends they have damaged her reputation, the suit states.
The other lieutenant had warned Grasso to “distance (her)self from this whole Tim Colomey thing,” but she nonetheless gave a declaration on Colomey’s behalf in opposition to an unsuccessful city motion to dismiss his case, the suit states.
“As a further result of the department’s conduct, plaintiff’s post- retirement job opportunities will be significantly and adversely impacted, as LAPD’s SWAT team is one of the oldest, most well-respected and most cutting- edge SWAT teams in the country and even in the world,” according to the suit, which further states that Grasso has suffered emotional distress.
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