#IM THE CAPTAIN NOW MEME PROFESSIONAL#
The letter came to the attention of department leadership and to the Professional Standards Bureau, it says.
The following March, she shared her complaints of the department’s “failure to condemn and remedy the derogatory and demeaning” online posts in a letter to the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Assn., the suit says. The suit alleges that “no appropriate discipline was imposed for these egregious acts.” “Yet despite learning of the foregoing misconduct explicitly targeting, LAPD leadership did not take prompt and appropriate corrective action to stop and remedy the harassment she endured,” the suit read. “Plaintiff was humiliated, offended, and threatened by this harassing conduct targeting her and other female department employees.”įrench said she lodged a harassment complaint in July 2020 but wasn’t interviewed by department officials until five months later. “Plaintiff saw these and other offensive social media posts and learned they were widely viewed, shared, and discussed by LAPD employees throughout the department,” the suit alleged. One such post made a reference to gang rape, the suit alleged, referencing French’s position and the LAPD’s Metropolitan Division. The posts were made on the social media account according to the suit, and “several memes or posts targeted other female department employees because of their sex or gender.” “Numerous posts or memes made use of negative gender stereotypes, such as depicting plaintiff as a bird or as a pouting child, contained offensive, demeaning, threatening, and sexualized references to plaintiff, and depicted violence against plaintiff,” the suit said. The online abuse lasted from about July 2020 to June 2021, the lawsuit alleges. Shortly thereafter, she became aware of another “derogatory” meme going around that featured a Hello Kitty image accompanied by a captain suggesting that the gang unit had gone “crying” to the watch commander of third watch, French’s position.įrench said she continued to raise the issue at subsequent roll calls as she did, the memes began to target her specifically and grew more vulgar. The meme, the suit says, compared the unidentified gang officer’s actions to the feminine hygiene product “to signify weakness by appealing to negative gender stereotypes.”įrench says she admonished the officers under her command during a roll call, warning them that the posting or sharing of such memes could lead to discipline. The meme seemed to mock a gang unit cop who had stopped a Southeast officer from using a baton on a suspect.įrench alleges that the meme depicted the baton as a tampon, and the caption read something along the lines of “this is what brings to a UOF,” using an initialism for a use-of-force incident. The hyper-sexualized posts reportedly began sometime in July 2020, after French became aware of a sexist meme being shared by some Southeast Division officers on her shift. He then proceeded to “unfairly” counsel her “for purportedly being mean, hostile, and unprofessional based on unspecified and unsupported criticisms by unidentified officers who were more likely than not simply disgruntled because plaintiff reported the memes,” the lawsuit said. He repeatedly canceled or refused meetings with her and took away some of her duties without justification. But the suit alleges that instead of helping French, Dohmen began avoiding her. Shortly after the harassment started, French said she tried taking her concerns to her captain, Clinton Dohmen.
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