Staffing firm for APD faces suit
Select Staffing also accused of not taking timely action
Lawsuit charges agency mishandled harassment charges by workers at APD
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit against an Albuquerque staffing firm, claiming at least four female employees working at the Albuquerque Police Department were harassed and that the firm did not appropriately handle the employees’ complaints.
The lawsuit is the latest development in a three-year legal battle involving harassment allegations at the department’s Inspection of Public Records Act Unit. The allegations were made by four women — Roberta Archuleta, Tiffani Dix, Barbara Houston and Christella Sanchez — hired through Real Time Staffing Services Inc., doing business as Select Staffing.
Select Staffing said in a statement provided through an attorney that it “was never apprised of (the alleged harassment) on a contemporaneous basis … (and) Select intends to vigorously defend itself in this lawsuit.”
In an email, an APD spokesman said the city’s new administration has “directed that all existing city employees undergo sexual harassment training,” a process he said is underway.
Loretta Medina, the EEOC’s supervising trial attorney in the case, told the Journal that the conduct alleged in the suit is “egregious and surprising for a police department.” She described the lawsuit as a “message for staffing agencies that they are responsible for protecting their employees, and for ensuring that any harassment experienced by those employees stops immediately.”
Medina said any potential action taken against the APD as a result of the EEOC’s investigation and subsequent lawsuit would be handled by the Department of Justice, which has not yet responded to a request for comment.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in New Mexico after the parties failed to reach a voluntary settlement, according to an EEOC news release.
The lawsuit claims at least four women were subjected to sexual harassment “by supervisory or managerial officials and/or coworkers” at APD in late 2014 and early 2015, and that Select Staffing failed to “take timely
preventative or remedial actions” in response to repeated complaints by the women.
Among the conduct experienced by women assigned to the APD unit, according to the suit:
■ “Touching, slapping, hitting or kicking of their buttocks and other body parts”
■ Grabbing or otherwise touching of the women’s breasts
■ Name-calling such as “whore,” “c...t” and “sluts”
■ Throwing objects at the women to demean them
The commission seeks back wages, and compensatory and punitive damages for the four women named in the suit, and “similarly situated female employees of … Select Staffing,” as well as a “permanent injunction against the company from engaging in any further gender-discriminatory practices” and a court order requiring the company to institute various workplace harassment policies.
Attorney David Foster, who has represented the four women in legal actions against the APD dating back to 2015, described former APD records custodian Reynaldo Chavez as a “central player” in complaints that gave rise to the EEOC’s investigation. Among the allegations in those documents are that Chavez and other APD supervisors harassed the women and warned them against reporting their concerns to the city.
Chavez was fired by the department in 2015 after a misconduct investigation. Chavez filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the department alleging his termination was due to the fact that he had raised concerns about the department’s alleged violations of state public record law.
An attorney representing Chavez did not respond to a request for comment. Chavez denied the misconduct allegations against him in his whistleblower lawsuit.
Foster said the women had been in settlement negotiations with the city, on behalf of APD, earlier this year through the commission’s conciliation process. Those ended around May 21, according to Foster, when the city “made one low-ball offer to resolve the case, then cut off any further negotiations.”
“For (Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller) who has been so vocal about stopping sexual harassment, it speaks volumes that he would cut off any further negotiations,” said Foster.
A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said in an email that Keller takes harassment allegations seriously and “has worked diligently to strengthen the city’s sexual harassment policy.”