Inside the Sex-Discrimination Lawsuit Against a Colorado Police Department
Judging by the number of sexual-discrimination complaints put forward by female law enforcement employees of late, the question of whether such Colorado agencies offer a level playing field remains open.
Examples include lawsuits from 2015 and 2016 filed by a total of twelve female deputies with the Denver Sheriff Department; the documents allege that the Denver County Jail is a house of horrors for women guards. And last month, former Denver-based FBI agent Danielle Marks sued FBI director James Comey based on claims that she was subjected to both discrimination and sexual harassment at the organization.
In the meantime, Corporal Brandee Compton is suing the Pueblo Police Department on two fronts. She maintains that the PPD promoted men over her, even though she had superior test scores, as retaliation for her previously filing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint against the deputy chief — who just happened to be on the committee charged with interviewing candidates. She also asserts that she was discriminated against in terms of work duties after being injured on the job. The lawsuit is on view below.
The Pueblo Police Department offered no comment on the suit because it’s still pending. That leaves Rosemary Orsini, Compton’s attorney, to lay out the basic facts of the case against the backdrop of what she sees as a historical lack of opportunities for women at the PPD.
“The department has approximately 200 police officers, and around 10 percent are female,” Orsini says. “There are also 21 supervisory positions, and only one is held by a female.”
Former female agent sues FBI claiming sexual harassment, discrimination
Inappropriate sexual remarks became so commonplace within the FBI ranks of a special drug task force that male agents would often joke about how many zeroes would be on a lawsuit after particularly rancid remarks.
Danielle Marks identified FBI Director James Comey as a defendant in the federal civil lawsuit filed Thursday on her behalf by Denver attorneys Charlotte Sweeney and Kaitlyn Wright.
Marks is asking to be reinstated as an FBI agent, and seeking back pay, compensatory damages and attorneys fees in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver.
Marks claims that she was “constructively fired” when she resigned under duress from the FBI in September 2014 after a year of discriminatory treatment.
“After a year of enduring constant inappropriate comments and poor treatment, the
environment at the (Metro Gang Task Force) became so hostile and intolerable that it began to affect Ms. Marks’s mental health,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also raises questions about the professionalism of FBI agents who allegedly failed inexplicably to perform surveillance or wiretapping duties, presumably because Marks led the drug operations.
Marks became a FBI agent in 2010 and worked as a drug and gang officer in Baltimore, where she received “successful,” and “excellent” marks. She transferred to Denver in 2013, where she joined the MGTF, which is made up of Denver and Aurora police officers and federal agents.