LOS ANGELES (CNS) – A veteran Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department captain is suing the county, alleging she has been subjected to racial and sex discrimination as a commanding officer by two white male supervisors who isolated her from the workplace and held meetings with a white bureau lieutenant without her knowledge.
Capt. Blanca Arevalo’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit also alleges harassment and failure to take corrective action. She seeks unspecified damages.
“Despite its promise to preserve the dignity, respect and professionalism of the workplace, as well as protect plaintiff from discrimination, harassment and inappropriate conduct, defendant LASD refuses to hold its supervisors accountable for their unlawful behavior,” the suit states.
An LASD representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the suit brought Wednesday.
Arevalo was hired in 1999 and previously worked in the Twin Towers jail while also holding such jobs as providing security in three county courthouses and as a watch commander at the Norwalk station. Cerritos residents commended her for her show of restraint during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd, the suit states.
Arevalo also served as an aide to an assistant sheriff and was promoted to captain in May 2022, the suit states. Arevalo is the commanding officer of the Aero Bureau and is charged with the unit’s fiscal management, personnel administration, operational efficiency and risk management.
However, upon Arevalo’s arrival to the Aero Bureau, the Special Operations Division’s chief and the plaintiff’s supervising commander, both white, “quickly established” that Arevalo, a Latina, was “captain of the Aero Bureau in name only,” telling her she was not to make any fiscal, resource or personnel allocation changes without their approval, the suit states. The commander reports to the chief and both are co-defendants in the suit.
Arevalo also was excluded from involvement in efforts to acquire new helicopters, although white males were allowed to attend such discussions, the suit states. The pair also assigned a white male lieutenant to the Aero Bureau even though the unit already had one lieutenant and that was all that was required by staffing, according to the suit, which further states that the commander told her to “deal with it” and that the second lieutenant was a “gift” to her.
When Arevalo expressed concerns about the second lieutenant’s hiring to the commander, he made an implied threat to her by saying that was “how people get moved,” the suit alleges.
Over several months, the commander “isolated plaintiff, refused to speak with her, circumvented plaintiff’s authority” and directly issued orders to the second lieutenant and had him attend secret Aero Bureau meetings, the suit states.
Through their alleged inaction, the LASD hierarchy “permitted and condoned the rampant racism and sexism” Arevalo contends she suffered and the chief and commander, who were not disciplined, have only felt more emboldened, according to the suit.
The second lieutenant has been on military leave since August 2023, the suit states.
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