Second female police officer sues Markham
Suits filed against city, department chief allege sex discrimination
A second female police officer has sued Markham and its police chief claiming she suffered sexbased discrimination, harassment and retaliation.
Kyung Palmer, a former parttime Markham police officer, alleges she was fired last summer after filing a complaint about the disparate treatment she received and then offered $3,000 by the city in exchange for waiving her claims, according to a recently filed federal civil rights lawsuit.
Palmer is one of four current or former female Markham officers who have lodged discrimination complaints against the city and its police chief in the past 15 months and the second to file a lawsuit, records show.
Officer Monique Woods, who is represented by the same attorney as Palmer, sued Markham in March claiming she’d been harassed and belittled, denied equipment for training and refused time off, among other slights not experienced by her male colleagues.
Chief Terry White and Mayor Roger Agpawa have declined to directly address any of the officers’ complaints, but have said they respect their right to pursue legal action.
“We stand by the chief and will let the matter be resolved through the proper channels and not the media,” the city said in a statement. “Though we take these matters very seriously and support our men and women in uniform, we will rely on the process to guide us on a resolution in this matter.”
Palmer, who spent 10 years with Markham’s police force, claims she was harassed, denied training opportunities and time off, involuntarily removed from her assignment and ultimately terminated despite meeting the department’s expectations.
She claims she was fired last July in retaliation for filing a sex discrimination complaint with the Illinois Department of Human Rights. Following her termination, Palmer filed a second discrimination claim with the agency that specifically addressed her “unlawful termination,” records show.
Palmer alleges that when she was quickly hired by another department — state records show she now works for Harvey — White called her new employer on more than one occasion in an effort to get her fired, according to the suit.
Her suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and the cost of attorney’s fees for what it claims was “unwelcome harassment that unreasonably interfered with her work performance by creating an environment that was intimidating, hostile, and offensive on the basis of her sex.”
Neither Palmer nor her lawyer responded to requests for comment on her suit.
The Department of Human Rights found earlier this year that Palmer’s initial discrimination complaint contained a “lack of substantial evidence” to support its allegations, records show.
The agency’s reason for making that determination was not immediately clear and a department spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. The status of her second complaint regarding her termination was not immediately known.
An attorney who specializes in employee discrimination cases said such determinations are not necessarily indicative of the strength of an employee’s claims.
Volney Brand, a civil rights lawyer who is not involved in Palmer’s case but has worked on similar cases, said he wouldn’t put much stock in an agency’s finding that an employee’s claims lacked evidence because administrative bodies are under “tremendous pressure” to process discrimination claims and thus face practical limitations in their investigations.
“I have represented individuals whereby an administrative agency did not find discrimination, but these individuals achieved excellent results when the claims were later pursued in court,” he said.