HPD
accused
of allowing harassment /Attorneys
for the first woman on its motorcyclesquad cite a "code of silence"
in ranks
By HARVEY RICE - Staff
The Houston Police Department retaliated
against the first woman to join its motorcycle squad and against other
officers who supported her sexual harassment complaints, an attorney
told a federal jury Tuesday.
Attorneys for Beth Kreuzer, a 20-year
veteran who retired after filing a sexual discrimination lawsuit last
year, said the department shielded the supervisor behind a code of
silence.
Kreuzer's lawyers made it clear they
intend to put on trial the culture of a police department they believe
continues to discriminate against women.
Studies "identify the code of silence
as the most important problem in policing," Kreuzer attorney Katherine
Butler said in her opening statement before U.S. District Judge Kenneth
Hoyt.
"The first step for the police department
is to realize they have a problem," Butler said. "They are not doing
that."
Kreuzer, who worked in homicide before
being promoted to sergeant and transferred to the motorcycle division,
known as "Solo," accuses the city of failing to rein in a supervisor
who abused subordinates and sexually harassed her.
But Assistant City Attorney Donald
Fleming told jurors that a group of Solo officers backed Kreuzer's
sexual harassment complaints because they wanted to retaliate against
Sgt. C.E. Simmons for enforcing rules that ended a lucrative off-duty
escort business.
"This is purely and simply about money,"
Fleming said.
He called the alleged harassment "simple
teasing," and said, "The code of silence is something from TV and
the movies."
Butler said no women serve in the motorcycle
division now and noted that women make up about 11 percent of Houston's
police force, a lower percentage than other metropolitan police departments.
By comparison, she said, women make
up 24 percent of the Washington, D.C., force.
An HPD
spokesman said that, as of April 1, there were 655 women on the force
of 5,112, or 12.8 percent.
Far from being a chronic complainer,
Kreuzer worked weekends to learn the skills she needed to become the
only woman homicide detective on a staff of 70 detectives in 1988,
Butler said.
Kreuzer ran into a wall of rejection
from fellow officers when she came to Solo in 1998, Butler said.
As she won acceptance, Simmons began
his harassment, sometimes rubbing her arms and back or calling her
his girlfriend, humiliating Kreuzer and subjecting her to ridicule,
Butler said. The lawyer cited an incident in which another officer
said Simmons was attracted to Kreuzer and mimicked the sergeant "masturbating
himself to an orgasm."
Kreuzer's complaint to a lieutenant
brought no response, the lawyer said. The harassment only was revealed
after another officer mentioned Kreuzer's situation while complaining
about Simmons' treatment of the entire squad, she said.
Solo officer Thomas Barnes testified
that officers who told Internal Affairs Division investigators about
Simmons' sexual harassment of Kreuzer were subjected to retailiation.
Following a 2002 internal affairs investigation,
Simmons was suspended for seven days for exhibiting a "lack of sound
judgment" and "respect for others." The punishment later was reduced
to a written reprimand.