Richmond officer sues Police Department

Broken promise led to lawsuit, attorney says

RICHMOND >> A veteran Richmond police officer has sued his own department, alleging that his own colleagues made “terrorist” jokes around him and passed him over for promotions based on a racist assumption that he is Muslim.

Bashar Zeidan, a Richmond officer for more than a decade, filed the suit last September, naming Lt. Timothy Gard and the Richmond Police Department as defendants. The suit alleges that Zeidan agreed to dismiss a similar lawsuit 10 years ago after “an agreement by the Richmond Police Department” to cease similar harassment that went on back then, and that he filed the new suit after that promise was broken.

“Zeidan has endured ongoing discrimination and harassment on a near daily basis because he is Jordanian (from the Middle East), has a Middle Eastern accent and his perceived religion is Muslim even though he is Catholic,” Zeidan’s attorneys wrote in the amended complaint filed Sept. 9. They added. “In the past two years, plaintiff was called ‘terrorist’ at least four times to plaintiff’s face.”

Gard is named because Zeidan alleges the lieutenant “continued to hold back plaintiff’s career in retaliation for his lawsuit and for expressing concerns about discrimination and harassment,” the complaint says. It also says that other superiors gave Zeidan unfavorable shifts and work assignments, and that at least one of his colleagues admonished another for making xenophobic jokes about Zeidan’s nationality.

In another instance, a colleague said he didn’t trust Zeidan because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the complaint.

Attorneys for the city of Richmond haven’t responded to the complaint, but they did file a motion to dismiss citing technical legal grounds, arguing that Zeidan failed to cite the proper law in his claims against Gard. A spokesman for the Police Department didn’t respond to requests for comment on the suit.

The suit is still in its early stages, though late last month the plaintiffs hit a bit of a bump in the road: U.S. District Judge James Donato issued an order to show cause that demanded to

know why Zeidan’s lawyers failed to show up for a crucial hearing, where the motion to dismiss was to be decided.

In a response, attorney Fulvio Canjina explained that he and his colleague logged on for what they thought was a virtual hearing, unaware that Donato decided to have the hearing in person, without an online conference. Many judges in the Northern

District of California, where the suit was filed, recently have chosen to forgo COVID-19 safety measures and return to nonvirtual court hearings.

Canjina wrote that he and Cheney only figured out what had happened after being kicked off Zoom when the hearing had concluded.

“I apologize to the court for our mistake, but it was an honest one,” he wrote.

“I apologize to the court for our mistake, but it was an honest one.” Fulvio Canjina, attorney