Officer to meet with city in discrimination case
A Round Rock police officer who filed a complaint of discrimination against Chief Allen Banks will meet with representatives from the city for a mediation session on Tuesday, according to the officer’s attorney, Robert McCabe.
The city of Round Rock has declined to comment because of pending litigation, city spokesman Will Hampton said.
McCabe is representing officer Mike Losoya, who was fired by Banks in December after police accused him of making a false statement or police report in an incident in which Losoya chose not to arrest a person suspected of driving while intoxicated in April 2016, a statement from McCabe said.
Losoya in January appealed his firing to a thirdparty hearing examiner, who ruled that the city of Round Rock could not show that Losoya knowingly made a false statement or police report, according to McCabe.
McCabe’s statement said the city of Round Rock did not accept the ruling of the hearing examiner but retaliated against Losoya by “subjecting him to a discriminatory and hostile work environment when he returned to work at the Round Rock Police Department.”
Since the investigation against Losoya began, at least four separate cases of dishonesty involving white officers have “come to light,” McCabe’s statement said, but Banks has not investigated any of them.
Some of the misconduct alleged in the four separate cases happened while Banks was there, or was revealed during Losoya’s appeal hearing in January 2017, the statement said.
Losoya, who is Hispanic, filed the discrimination complaint with the Civil Rights Division of the Texas Workforce Commission.
“Officer Losoya simply wants Chief Allen Banks to respect the ruling of the hearing examiner and un-sustain the now clearly unfounded allegations of lying in an official capacity,” McCabe’s statement said.
“It is our hope that Chief Banks recognizes the apparent disparities in how he treated Losoya, a minority, versus how to chose to ignore several recent cases involving alleged acts of dishonesty involving white officers.”