Sheriff’s Bias Review Panel Urged

An array of civil rights groups Thursday urged the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to create a civilian panel to handle discrimination complaints within the Sheriff’s Department.

The request was spurred by the case of Sgt. Brian Moriguchi, whose tires were slashed and computer files deleted and who was the target of spurious internal charges in retaliation for his lodging an internal complaint about a racist drawing at a sheriff’s station.

“There are a lot of other officers out there who have suffered the same as I have, who have gone through what I have, but are afraid to come forward,” Moriguchi said in a news conference at the offices of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. He said the supervisors who coordinated his harassment remain with the department and, as far as he knows, have not been disciplined.

His lawyers said Moriguchi, who was awarded $60,000 in a jury trial after he filed a discrimination lawsuit, offered to waive any monetary damages in exchange for the establishment by the county of such an independent citizens’ commission. But the county turned down the offer, eventually agreeing to pay $138,000 to settle the case.

Civil rights attorneys argued that without an independent review agency, those who lodge grievances could become targets of retaliation--a common complaint of female deputies who have filed sexual-harassment claims.

“If the board wants to avoid the scandals that are currently rocking the LAPD, they must implement an independent investigator or a civilian review board,” said Nora Ramos, an Asian Pacific American Legal Center lawyer.

After complaints were lodged about how the Sheriff’s Department handles sexual harassment cases, supervisors last year won Sheriff Lee Baca’s agreement to let the county affirmative action office scrutinize and assist his agency’s investigations of discrimination charges. Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who has criticized the department’s handling of bias and harassment complaints, said that she believes the agreement addresses Moriguchi’s concerns but that she will review the request for a new panel.

Referring to concerns about retaliation, she said, “That’s the reason we changed it to [the] affirmative action [office].”

Burke also said that because the sheriff is an elected official, the board cannot dictate how he runs his agency. The Sheriff’s Department Thursday said it had no comment on the Moriguchi case.

Moriguchi said he arrived for work at the Santa Clarita Metrolink substation on Feb. 26, 1996, to find a bucktoothed caricature on the office’s white board accompanied by words like “ah so” and “Al-ight den.” When Moriguchi--then a detective--complained to his supervisor, he was told, “You don’t count; you’re not black or Hispanic,” according to a judge’s ruling in the lawsuit.

That supervisor also fabricated allegations against Moriguchi, triggering an internal probe, said the judge, who barred the county from leaving a written record of that inquiry in Moriguchi’s personnel file. Besides the tire slashing and tampering with Moriguchi’s files, the detective said, he and his girlfriend were followed.

Daniel Tokaji of the ACLU called the retaliation “a classic hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil [policy] designed to stifle internal criticism.”

County lawyers initially appealed the jury ruling. But after Moriguchi and activists appeared before the Board of Supervisors in December and asked that the verdict not be challenged, the county dropped its appeal.

Moriguchi thanked the county for settling, but said he believes that greater steps must be taken. “This isn’t about me versus the county of Los Angeles,” he said. “It’s about abuse of power in the Sheriff’s Department.”