‘I Was Kicked Out’: Black Female Officer Punished After Calling Out Missing Video Evidence of Two White Maryland Cops Assaulting an African-American Driver, Lawsuit Says
A former Black police officer in Prince George’s County, Maryland, who claims she was retaliated against and forced to resign after pressing for missing
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‘I Was Kicked Out’: Black Female Officer Punished After Calling Out Missing Video Evidence of Two White Maryland Cops Assaulting an African-American Driver, Lawsuit Says
Posted byBy Jill Jordan Sieder | Published on: October 28, 2024 CommentsComments (0)
A former Black police officer in Prince George’s County, Maryland, who claims she was retaliated against and forced to resign after pressing for missing video evidence of excessive force by two white police officers is suing the police and an investigator involved in her termination for racial discrimination.
In her civil rights lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on Monday, former Internal Affairs officer Lt. Sonya Zollicoffer claims she was investigating allegations made by a Black motorist of excessive force against two Prince George’s County police officers related to a traffic stop in October 2017 when she discovered that seven minutes of dashcam video capturing the alleged assault were missing from the tape.
“Missing evidence,” she said. “There was a tape missing from a traffic stop, which I was investigating.”
At the time she was also pursuing a racial discrimination complaint with the police Internal Affairs department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that African-American officers were receiving harsher punishment for disciplinary matters than white officers. That eventually led to a federal civil rights lawsuit by Hispanic and Black police officers against Prince George’s County filed in December 2018.
A decorated officer with 20 years on the force, Zollicoffer had witnessed multiple instances of disparate treatment of officers of color within the police department by manager and supervisors, including unfair disciplinary actions, denied promotions and racially offensive work environments, the lawsuit says.
Her promotion to Internal Affairs in 2015 had given her an opportunity to be “inside the room, at the table” and to investigate such wrongdoing, she said during an interview with the Strategies for Justice podcast in 2021.
But “once I spoke up about what I witnessed in Internal Affairs, I was kicked out,” she told the Washington Lawyer’s Committee, a civil rights organization.
In February of 2018, while investigating the alleged police brutality incident, Zollicoffer was abruptly transferred to the midnight shift on the police department’s patrol bureau, a position she did not seek.
Her complaint says her supervisor Capt. Art’z Watkins advised Zollicoffer that she could continue working on the internal affairs investigation into the two officers in her new role, but unbeknownst to her, the case was confidentially reassigned to another officer.
After she continued to press for a complete copy of the missing video footage, she was charged internally with misrepresenting herself and conduct becoming an officer for continuing to investigate a case that was no longer assigned to her.
An internal affairs investigation into her alleged misconduct in 2020 was led by Matthew Sledgeski of the Anne Arundel Police Department, whom Zollicoffer claims conspired with Watkins to conduct a racially biased and improper investigation orchestrated to result in her termination. Both Sledgeski and Watkins are white.
She alleges that her disciplinary case was further tainted when attorney Shaun Owens was assigned to represent her by the police union, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) for Prince George’s County.
Owens was simultaneously representing Zollicoffer and the two officers accused of using excessive force in the internal affairs case that she had been investigating, a “clear and direct conflict of interest” that she objected to with the FOP, demanding new counsel.
Her disciplinary case proceeded anyway, and in April of 2021 Zollicoffer was demoted two ranks to corporal and threatened with termination, her salary being cut in half, or losing her pension as a lieutenant. She felt as though she had no choice but to retire, the complaint says.
The two officers in the excessive force case were later cleared, reported NBC Washington.
The lawsuit also contends that the police union committed legal malpractice by failing to provide Zollicoffer with “conflict-free representation” and by not informing her that accepting a settlement in the federal discrimination case would void her right to appeal or to challenge her internal affairs dispute with the police department.
In July of 2021 the 11 police officers involved in the federal lawsuit, including Zollicoffer, settled for $2.3 million in compensation for discrimination and retaliation they experienced as members of the Prince George’s County police department, reported Maryland Matters. The department also agreed to make changes to its disciplinary procedures and training in how it handles claims of racist, discriminatory or retaliatory acts involving both civilians and employees.
As a result of being “demoted and constructively terminated based on the racially biased and unjustified investigation” against her, Zollicoffer has suffered severe emotional distress, humiliation, anxiety and depression, the complaint says. She faces significant barriers in obtaining future employment in law enforcement or other fields, and damage to her professional and personal reputation.
She seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against Sledgeski and the Fraternal Order of Police.
“This scheme sought to destroy Lt. Zollicoffer’s reputation and career all because she was trying to do the right thing,” her counsel, civil rights attorney Jordan Howlette, told nbcwashington.
The police union told reporters it is not commenting on the lawsuit. The Anne Arundel County law office representing Sledgeski did not immediately respond to a request for comment.