Several current and former Pasadena police officers and supervisors, all of them people of color, suffered assault, discrimination and retaliation by a pair of department cliques, one of which is called the Good Ole Boys Club, according to a series of lawsuits. filed against the department.
Three allege that they were attacked by colleagues. Officer Jarvis Shelby said a commander put him in a headlock in August. Lt. Sam De Sylva said another lieutenant kicked him in the leg so hard that he needed surgery. And retired Lt. Carolyn Gordon said she was shot in the groin with a paintball gun during training, an injury that caused internal bleeding.
“These are police officers who are supposed to protect the community, but they attack their own,” said Brad Gage, an attorney representing the six Pasadena officers and former supervisors. Four have already sued the department and two others (Gordon and retired officer Omar Elhosseiny) are planning lawsuits, Gage said.
The allegations further cast a shadow over a department accused of detaining minorities and using deadly force against young black men under questionable circumstances.
At the heart of the lawsuits are two police gangs that allegedly control the Pasadena Police Department. One is called GOBC, or Good Ole Boys Club, and the other is known as Veterans, and is made up of officers who have been involved in a police shooting.
Those named in the current and pending lawsuits say police gangs rule the department.
Former Pasadena police officers Carolyn Gordon and Omar Elhosseiny (right) recount their experiences of assault and discrimination during a news conference with attorney Brad Gage (left) at police headquarters Thursday.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“If there is racism, retaliation and violence within the Police Department, it can certainly spread to the community,” said Gordon, a department supervisor who retired in April.
She said she was called a crybaby after being shot during a training exercise in 1998. “Sometimes in this building, I feared for my safety,” Gordon said, standing outside police headquarters at a news conference on Thursday.
Elhosseiny, a retired officer who received the department's Medal of Courage, said that last year, when he reported three officers for drinking on duty, he was mocked.
“They called me 'Taliban,'” said Elhosseiny, who is Muslim. “They told me to park my car in front of Mecca.”
The series of lawsuits against the Pasadena Police Department began last year and gained public attention when Officer Taisyn Crutchfield alleged she was unfairly punished for attempting to deescalate a situation in which another officer and a woman were detained.
In the lawsuit, Crutchfield, 27, alleges she was punished after a situation on Feb. 20, 2023, in which additional officers were called to an argument involving the two children of Charles Towns, a Black man who was shot dead by Los Angeles. Altadena County sheriff's deputies in January.
Clockwise from top left: Pasadena Officer Omar Elhosseiny, Officer Jarvis Shelby, retired Lt. Carolyn Gordon, Sgt. Milton White, Lieutenant Sam De Sylva and Officer Taisyn Crutchfield.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Crutchfield's attorney said police were called to the scene when one of Towns' children, a minor, was “understandably upset about his father's death.”
The incident was captured on body camera video and shows her touching Officer Ralph Palacios' arm and then his shoulder in what she characterized as an effort to defuse a situation in which he was arguing with a black woman who was being detained. Palacios told him, “No, don't do that,” and then pushed his arm away from her and told him to get out of her sight. A supervisor then ordered the officers to move away from each other.
Crutchfield was placed on paid administrative leave after the incident. Later, he said, her officers retaliated against her by not responding to her call for backup when they responded to a man with a gun.
In her lawsuit, Crutchfield also alleged that while she was training, Officer Al Garcia asked that she be washed and fired from the department. Once she was on patrol, she was subjected to derogatory racial comments and left without support, according to her lawsuit.
In another case, Crutchfield was sent alone to a domestic violence call and Shelby said he responded as backup. The call caused problems for her in the department and put a target on her back, she said in his lawsuit, noting that a commanding officer put her in a headlock last fall.
Melvin White, who is now a sergeant, witnessed the headlock incident and described what he saw to his superiors, he said in a lawsuit. White said that after reporting him, he became the target of retaliation.
However, Pasadena Chief Gene Harris said of the incident: “There was no assault or violence perpetrated by any member of this police department.”
Harris said in December that “a thorough investigation was conducted and completed before [White’s] the lawsuit was filed.”
“I take any allegations of assault or violence seriously and will not tolerate an internal culture of assault or violence,” Harris said at the time.
The Pasadena Police Officers Association, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, called the allegations false. And Pasadena police officials have said they will defend themselves vigorously, adding that the department “is proud of its diversity at all ranks.” Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Over the past decade, Pasadena has paid millions of dollars in civil lawsuits stemming from fatal police shootings and deaths of Black men in custody.
In 2021, the city paid $7.5 million to the three young children of Anthony McClain, a Black man who was shot and killed while fleeing during a traffic stop in 2020. In 2012, police shot and killed Kendrick McDade, another unarmed black man, after a 911 caller falsely reported he had a gun.
Times photographer Myung J. Chun contributed to this report.
