Ex-officer claims sexual harassment, racial discrimination in Fresno police department

A former Fresno police officer filed a lawsuit saying she was subject to sexual harassment and racial discrimination in a hostile work environment in Fresno Police Department, where she was also investigated for not firing her service weapon into a crowd engaged in a gun battle.

Amya Brooks, 23, resigned from Fresno Police Department on June 14, less than two weeks before Chief Paco Balderrama announced he would resign. The lawsuit said she was one of three Black women officers in Fresno.

She was an officer for about two years and had worked as a police cadet with the department before that, according to her lawsuit. In that time, her training officer and others made comments about her body, told her Black policewomen had a bad reputation of being untrustworthy and said the department used her as a public relations prop.

The lawsuit says when she complained about the poor treatment from other officers, she was told to keep quiet and was ultimately labeled a “snitch.”

The complaint filed on Friday asks the Fresno County Superior Court to award her for lost wages and other damages to be determined at trial.

She declined to speak with The Fresno Bee, according to her attorney, Nick Yasman of Los Angeles-based West Coast Employment Lawyers.

“Ms. Brooks just wanted a chance to live out her dream of being a police officer free from such egregious abuse and harassment but, unfortunately, she chose the wrong department,” Yasman said.

The city of Fresno does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation, spokesperson Sontaya Rose told The Bee on Monday.

Sexual harassment and racial discrimination

The lawsuit says about a week into her training with a Fresno corporal, a call came in about an African American woman causing a disturbance at a McDonald’s. The corporal, who is named in the lawsuit, said to Brooks, “Another angry Black bitch — you can deal with this one,” the complaint alleges.

The corporal also had a tendency to hit department equipment — like a cruiser or the computer inside — with a balled up fist, the lawsuit says, adding he did so to intimidate Brooks.

On another occasion, the corporal told Brooks that an officer liked her “nice, petite, ebony booty,” the lawsuit says. She endured multiple other unwanted sexual advances from officers.

More than once she was used to tout the Fresno Police Department’s diversity, the lawsuit says. It points to a photo the department posted on its Facebook page on July 23, 2022.

She said she was asked to be at the event at St. Rest Baptist Church, a predominantly Black church, for the appearance of diversity in the department for news cameras. Balderrama told her to pose next to him in the photo later posted on Facebook, the lawsuit says.

Around the same time that summer, she was sent to Fightgirl Fitness, a gym founded and run by a Fresno officer, for a TV news story, the lawsuit says. Brooks had never been to the gym before but her supervisors wanted the gym to appear diverse.

The lawsuit did not name the news station, but Brooks can be seen in an ABC30 news story from June 2022.

Hostile work environment

Brooks was the subject of an insubordination claim last August she believed to be a retaliation for complaining about the treatment by her training officer, the lawsuit says.

Two months later she was assigned to patrol alone during the night shift in southwest Fresno.

Four days into her new assignment in October, Brooks was patrolling downtown and pulled into a parking lot near Mezcal Lounge on Van Ness Avenue, the lawsuit says. It was around 2 a.m. so a large crowd, which the lawsuit estimated was about 150 people, was leaving the night club.

The crowd split into two groups on either side of her patrol car before some people quickly drew guns and began firing at each other, the lawsuit says. Though many of the people in the groups were not armed.

Brooks drew her gun but never fired it because of the presence of unarmed civilians, the lawsuit says. She said the events caused her to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

In May, she was informed she was under investigation by Internal Affairs for not activating her body-worn camera during the shooting outside Mezcal and for not firing her weapon, among other potential policy violations, the lawsuit said.

She was out on medical leave for stress for a portion of her second year as an officer, but ultimately resigned in June.