‘Find Another Job Pumping Gas’: Female Detectives Punished for Speaking Out In Response to Years of Racist, Sexist Abuse by White Male Supervisors Win Settlement
Two female detectives have reached a settlement with the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey and with two white male supervisors they sued for racial and gender discrimination.
Detectives Lakeisha Davis, who is Black, and Kathryn Gannon, who is white, filed a civil rights lawsuit against the prosecutor’s office in 2022, claiming they were subjected to derogatory comments, denied promotions, subjected to a hostile work atmosphere and faced unlawful retaliation because of their race and gender.
On March 4, Davis and Gannon settled with the prosecutor’s office for an undisclosed amount. Attorneys for the detectives and the Cape May Prosector’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the case and the settlement.
According to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey in February of 2022, Davis began working for the Cape May County Prosecutor’s Office in 2004 in the narcotics division, and was promoted to county detective in 2006, receiving “satisfactory or above” performance evaluations and accolades from co-workers and assistant prosecutors in recent years.
At the time the complaint was filed, she was the only Black female detective in the prosecutor’s office and had become frustrated and distressed over the ongoing harassment and hostility from coworkers and supervisors over the years, the lawsuit says.
She overheard supervisors and coworkers call her and other female colleagues a “Bitch” multiple times, the complaint says, and was dismayed when she heard Paul Skill, the Chief of County Detectives, tell a group of white male coworkers that “she only got the job because [then-]Prosecutor [Robert] Taylor needed a token Black female to parade throughout the county,” the complaint alleges.
The “tipping point” that led Davis to file a complaint with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) in 2019 was when she learned that Skill, who was her supervisor, had called her a “ni—er b-tch” during a heated off-duty argument with another police officer in a bar in the presence of several coworkers.
Besides being subjected to racial slurs, her EEOC complaint filed in October 2019 claimed that because of her race and gender in the five preceding years she was denied overtime details, received unjust discipline and was denied promotions to special teams offering better pay and perks like being allowed to take her county-issued vehicle home each day.
Davis twice applied for the hostage negotiation team, which was made up exclusively of males, in 2015 and 2018, but was not selected, with no reason given, she says. Instead, she was transferred from the special victims unit to the litigation unit across town, which is a “reputationally inferior unit” that is “commonly known as the place you are sent for punishment or for a figurative ‘time out.’”
Prior to that, she says she overheard Lt. Joseph Landis refer to her as a “f—ing b-tch, who can’t stay out of trouble.” When she complained to Skill about the “continual verbal disrespect, disrespect of her ability, disrespect of her race and gender,” the complaint says, he responded “that if [Davis] was unhappy at work she could find another job pumping gas.’”
In June 2018, Davis was assigned to a shredding detail in a garage that didn’t have air conditioning on a 100-degree day, worked up a sweat, and changed out of her wet work shirt to a dry tee shirt, which exposed the butterfly tattoo on her arms, she says.
When Landis saw her tattoos, he called a supervisors staff meeting to express his dislike and berate her for her “blatant” disrespect of the tattoo policy.
A few years later, in August 2021, Landis was among several white male officers who visibly exposed their tattoos during a community outreach event “without similar reactions,” the complaint says.
Davis also alleged that Lt. Steve Vivarina was overheard saying he “hates women in law enforcement” and that he denied her the opportunity to earn overtime compensation by refusing her participation in ABC (alcoholic beverage control) details because she is a Black female.
After Davis filed her EEOC complaint, an internal affairs investigation was initiated to look into her recent weekend duty assignment, an adverse action which she claims was retaliatory.
On June 6, 2020, Smith had attended a Black Lives Matter event in Washington, D.C., and arranged for another officer to cover her shift assignment, a common practice in the prosecutor’s office, she says.
Meanwhile, another superior officer asked her to come into his office to speak about her allegations of harassment he had learned about through the human resources department, which the lawsuit says was inappropriate as “EEOC investigations are required to be kept confidential and investigated only through proper channels.”
“This was an intimidation tactic and meant to silence her,” the complaint says. Davis declined the conversation and amended her EEOC complaint to include claims of retaliation.
Plaintiff Kathryn Gannon also began working for the prosecutor’s office in 2004 and had worked her way up to the position of Detective First Class in the Fugitive/Warrant Unit by 2019 when the lawsuit was filed.
She claims she had good and above average performance reviews during her tenure, but faced discriminatory treatment due to her gender once she began working full-time in 2006.
Gannon says she did not know that she was pregnant when she was hired, and claims that Chief Tracey Super accused her of hiding the pregnancy and threatened to terminate her.
In 2009, Gannon says she left work to have a beer with Skill, who “turned around to visually scope out, in a very obvious way,” her buttocks, and then said, “I just wanted to see what you were working with” and “I was just looking at your butt.”
Gannon said she “felt very uncomfortable being peered at by her supervisor,” finished her beer and went home.
The lawsuit contends that Gannon’s white male superiors denied her promotions and delayed her professional advancement through the ranks, despite her seniority, experience and commendations.
In 2014, she requested a title change and pay increase for the position of Detective First Class, advancement actions typically awarded to all male employees who had completed 10 years within the office “without hesitation”, the lawsuit says.
Chief Super allegedly told Davis that Prosecutor Taylor was going to “drag his feet” with putting her request through to the county and that he didn’t believe it would be approved.
When the title change was later denied, Gannon typed a memorandum stating she planned to file a grievance with the Police Benevolent Association. Her PBA representative, Detective Paul Worrell, said after reading it, “Are you sure you want to do this?” and told her the PBA would not represent her, she claims.
But Gannon subsequently learned she had received the title change and a four percent salary increase. She says she had to send the related paperwork back to Chief Super, who had initially included a lower salary amount than what was specified in her contract.
Super “did not like that Gannon corrected him,” the complaint says. In 2015, at his retirement celebration, Super told Gannon that the reason she had not been promoted to date was because she was too emotional, which the lawsuit calls a pretext for discrimination.
In August of 2017, Gannon applied for an open sergeant’s position for which she was qualified, and was passed over for two male detectives who got the job, at least one of whom had lesser experience and training than Gannon, she claims.
In September of 2017 she says she was ordered to write a memo that led to an internal affairs report and investigation into alleged misconduct by Vivarina by the professional standards unit, which ultimately found no wrongdoing on his part.
But Vivarina, then her supervisor in the Major Crimes Unit, held a grudge and subsequently retaliated against her in a manner that no male counterpart would have faced, she says.
She claims Vivarina did not award her a commendation after she led an important case involving terroristic threats, while he did issue a commendation to a male officer who played a minor role in the case, and who was his friend.
Gannon says Vivarina continued to discriminate against her by giving her unwanted cases, menial tasks, and treating her as a “detective secretary” because she was a female, even though she was senior to many of her male counterparts.
He was “protected by other men in the office … allowed to retaliate against her for reporting discrimination, and was insulated from any consequences for his actions,” the lawsuit says.
In 2018 Vivarina told Gannon, who then worked in the Major Crimes Unit, that she would be assigned as a detective to the newly initiated Animal Cruelty Task Force and the Fugitive/Warrant Unit, and would be assuming a role previously handled by a civilian agent.
Gannon asserts this duty-change was “the male-dominated administration’s attempt to demean her as a woman by assigning her to mostly clerical position, including data entry, filing, monitoring the system for misuses and training employees — that requires no investigation responsibilities” and led to a loss of status and position.
Gannon also alleged that over her 17 years in the prosecutor’s office she was subjected to many lewd jokes and sexist comments by male colleagues that belittled the abilities of women. One joke that Vivarina allegedly told involved a vacuum salesman with a punchline referencing male ejaculation that “he just keeps cumming,” which she says was intended to “get under her skin and harass her.”
The two detectives claimed violations of state and federal civil rights law including a sex-based and race-based hostile working environment, disparate treatment and retaliation. They sought a jury trial to determine compensatory damages for their monetary losses, lost career and business opportunities and advancement, emotional stress, anxiety and indignity, as well as punitive damages.
In their brief supporting their motion to dismiss the case in 2022, the defendants focused mostly on legal arguments and the statute of limitations, not the substance of the allegations reported the Cape May County Herald.
In his 2023 opinion on the motion, U.S. District Court Judge Noel L. Hillman ruled that the detectives’ claims of sex-, gender- and race-based and race-based hostile work environment could proceed, while dismissing the other claims.
In a March 4 letter to U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Elizabeth A. Pascal confirming the parties “have reached an agreement in principle to settle and conclude all claims,” Russell Lichtenstein, attorney for the defendants, asked for a 60-day order “while we work out the more granular details of the settlement.”