‘Stop Taking It So Personal’: Black New York Deputy Discovers Colleagues Saved Her Contact with a Photo of Octavia Spencer’s ‘The Help’ Character and Fought Back — Now the County Must Pay
Three days into a federal trial last week, a Black female deputy sheriff won a $400,000 settlement from Onondaga County in central New York after nearly five years of litigating a lawsuit accusing the county sheriff’s department of racial discrimination and retaliation for complaining about it.
Kamilla Peck, 49, who worked for the sheriff’s department as a custody deputy from 2006 to 2023, sued the county in 2021 after twice being passed over for a promotion to sergeant, and after her worker’s comp claims caused by an on-the-job injury were denied.
In her complaint, she says she was subjected to a hostile work environment and regularly faced racist remarks and offensive treatment during her tenure, including in 2018 when she was transferred from jail duty to the Community Relations Unit.
At the time, Peck was told by her immediate supervisor, Sgt. Jonathan Seeber, that “the only reason we brought you into the unit is because you are Black,” her lawsuit claims.
Seeber later denied this allegation.
Seeber regularly sent her emojis of Black hands and, along with Chief Katherine Trask, mocked her “urban dialect,” responding to her with quips such as, “Yeah, I am going to do DAT!” she claims.
Sgt. Seeber and Deputy Kelly Seeber identified Peck on their phones with a photo of actress Octavia Spencer in her role as a maid in the film “The Help,” the lawsuit says, and marveled that “it looks exactly like Kamilla.”
When she protested the comparison and asked them to remove the photo, Sgt. Seeber allegedly laughed and told Peck to “relax,” “get a thick skin” and “stop taking things so personal.” Peck was in tears after seeing the photo, a fellow employee later testified, reported Syracuse.com.
In August of 2019, Peck suffered an on-duty injury to her back when she tripped over a sandbag and fell on the sidewalk outside of the sheriff’s office. She was subsequently subjected to defamation and mocking by co-workers who reviewed video footage of the incident and claimed she was faking her injury, the lawsuit claims.
“I do recall there was laughter,” a fellow deputy said in an affidavit.
Her initial claim under the county’s workers compensation-like benefits program was initially approved, but denied a month later after a review noted that an independent medical examination had determined she had “reached maximum medical improvement” and had already returned full-time to work, according to court documents.
Her attorney A.J. Bosman told Atlanta Black Star the injury eventually required Peck to undergo spinal fusion surgery in 2023.
Peck claimed the denial of her appeal was done without due process and was discriminatory because white officers had applied for and received benefits after being injured without facing such scrutiny.
U.S. District Court Judge David N. Hurd later found that the county had legitimate reasons for denying her benefits that were “more than likely not based on discrimination.”
Peck also pointed to racial discrimination as the reason she was twice passed over for promotion to sergeant in favor of less qualified officers outside her protected class as a Black female, including in 2017 when white male officers who she argued had the same civil service test scores and less time on the job than she did got the promotion.
In 2019, she tried again, and a Hispanic male and a white female, who both had lower civil service test scores and less time on the job became sergeants, while Peck remained a deputy.
In his opinion and order issued in September of 2023, Hurd later found that the sheriff’s promotion board used factors other than test scores and seniority when considering candidates, and noted that the officer promoted in lieu of Peck had broader experience in multiple departments and performed better during interviews, particularly when asked to respond to hypothetical scenarios that a sergeant might have to handle. Hurd dismissed that part of her claim.
The judge also found that Peck’s attorney did not supply sufficient evidence of a hostile work environment, beyond “a few isolated incidents” that the defendants critiqued in their motion to dismiss the case, and he stripped that claim from her lawsuit.
Hurd did find that Peck had made the case for retaliation in violation of federal and state law, and the lawsuit proceeded on that basis.
In June of 2020, Peck made complaints about the discriminatory and hostile work environment to Sgt. Seeber and Chief Trask, including “disrespectful and belittling verbal treatment,” which was followed by a mediation including her union representative. She says she also mentioned the discriminatory conduct to Sheriff Eugene Conway and other supervisors during a forum on race held the same month at a local community college in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police a month earlier, where she became emotional and cried.
Peck made a formal written complaint of discrimination on June 22, 2020, and was then instructed to take a five-day paid administrative leave. When she returned, she said her police vehicle was taken away from her, and soon thereafter, an internal affairs investigation was initiated over an alleged pattern of her leaving work 30 minutes early.
She was not in the end disciplined for the alleged time infraction, but a supervisor’s memorandum was put in her file.
Peck claimed the investigation was “instigated in bad faith; no such actions were taken against white co-workers who had not made claims of discrimination.”
Also after she made her discrimination complaints, Peck said, most of her job duties were eliminated, and she was given assignments never before issued to white officers in her position, including menial tasks such as inventorying items in the community relations office and basement.
Onondaga Sheriff’s Office Facebook posts from 2017 to 2019 show a smiling Peck in her uniform meeting with children at schools, libraries and baseball games, engaging in activities with senior citizens, participating in a cancer walk fundraiser that she helped organize, and washing cars with high school students she had “adopted.”
A post from February 2019 includes a photo of Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon presenting Peck with the county’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Employee Recognition Award, which is, according to the caption, “given to County employees who demonstrate outstanding service in their work and personal life and who exemplifies [sic] the ideals of the slain civil rights leader.”
Peck told Atlanta Black Star that losing the public-facing part of her job was one of the most painful elements of the retaliation she faced from her supervisors at the sheriff’s department.
“I love my community, and my community gave me that love back,” she said. “I loved my job and it still bothers me today. I went to see some of my senior citizens, like, a month ago, and they were used to me coming there and playing bingo with them, and having little trinkets. I met so many people in this walk, and when that retaliation occurred, everything, the majority of it ceased. And that was hurtful, because once I left that unit, 90 percent of everything that I was doing ceased with that agency. No one cared about the inner city kids. No one went to the city schools. … A lot of those things I implemented, and no one cared about them. And it’s unfortunate that I feel that the community also took a hit when that happened to me.”
Peck’s complaint says she missed work in the fall and winter of 2020 due to her 2019 on-the-job injury, and was ordered to surrender her duty equipment (gun, bulletproof vest, radio) and threatened with suspension for not submitting a form to be completed by her health care provider, even though she had previously submitted other doctors’ notes excusing her absence that had been accepted by her supervisors.
Her lawsuit cited this as disparate treatment and retaliation, since no other officers out on an on-the-job injury were required to surrender their car and equipment, or were reprimanded over not completing the health form.
“They were trying to quash her,” said Bosman. “It was completely retaliatory.”
Hurd found “there is a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether the investigation and … subsequent issuance of a supervisor’s memo were motivated in part by retaliatory animus.” Testimony from one superior, Capt. Paula Pellizzari, “directly tied plaintiff’s discrimination complaint – which occurred just days earlier — to both an investigation and the memorandum,” he wrote. “In sum, a rational trier of fact could infer that a retaliatory motive played a part in these employment actions.”
Peck retired on medical disability paid by the state in December 2023, Bosman said.
Peck’s lawsuit sought a jury trial to determine compensatory and punitive damages, and to order Onondaga County to review and correct discriminatory treatment and conduct in the sheriff’s department, mandate training and educational programs for employees about discrimination and retaliation, and require annual reports demonstrating compliance.
On the third day of the trial in March, the parties decided to settle.
Bosman told Atlanta Black Star that “common sense prevailed” among counsel for the defendants after her team put several compelling witnesses on the stand, including Peck and her husband, a retired county sheriff who “was familiar with their procedures and what goes on there.”
The jury was composed of seven white men and two white women, most of whom were middle aged or retirement age, said Bosman, “which is not normally a great prospect in terms of an [African American] plaintiff, “not because they’re biased or prejudiced or racist or anything like that, but because it’s difficult for them to identify with someone who’s been discriminated against on the basis of the race.”
“But Kamilla’s husband is a middle-aged white man. So when he testified on her behalf, and did very well under cross examination, I think they identified with him. And he testified with respect to the emotional impact that this had on her. And so I think he was a good witness in that regard.”
On March 4, the Onondaga County Legislature voted to authorize the $400,000 settlement against the sheriff’s office, reported CNYCentral.
Peck says she has mixed feelings about the settlement.
“I am satisfied that I was able to tell my story,” she told Atlanta Black Star. “I do have a sense of relief that I was able to speak in a courtroom and speak to a jury and a judge and and finally let my voice be heard. … But I can’t pretend to you that the scars are just magically gone, because they’re not. And there’s things that I have to deal with for probably the rest of my life, because what happened to me was pretty traumatic, you know, so I’m still dealing with that component and learning how to move on to the next phase of my life.”
Peck said that what is hardest to get over is “the feeling of being betrayed. I ultimately came to that unit to do good for my community. I really believed in Eugene Conway, who was the elected sheriff, and I thought together we were going to do some really great things. And so I put my best foot forward, and then I didn’t feel supported when I stood up against racism. I was just viciously attacked, judged and belittled. I lost a lot of colleagues who were friends. It is a lonely road standing up against what is wrong. What I lost emotionally, mentally — I can’t get that back in a number.”
Legal counsel for Onondaga County did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Atlanta Black Star.