A judge has thrown out part of a lawsuit alleging that Baldwin Park Unified School District officials retaliated and discriminated against the district’s former police chief, but the court will allow the chief to take the remainder of her claims to trial.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert B. Broadbelt’s ruling Monday, March 27, dismissed nearly half of former Chief Jill Poe’s claims, including two alleging defamation and one alleging the district placed her on paid administrative leave for refusing to fix a local blogger’s tickets.
The remaining claims allege Poe, who is a lesbian, was harassed, retaliated and discriminated against after she began publicly disclosing her sexual orientation in 2015.
Neither Poe’s attorney, Carney Shegerian, nor the school district’s attorneys returned requests for comment.
Insurance fraud conviction
Poe was placed on administrative leave by the district in September 2019 after a local blogger, Paul Cook, revealed that she had previously pleaded no contest to felony auto insurance fraud in 1999 while serving as an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department.
A criminal complaint at the time stated Poe reported her Toyota 4Runner stolen and collected $7,648 from her insurance company. Investigators, working off a tip from a fellow officer Poe had confided in, later found the vehicle parked in her brother’s backyard with no signs of damage.
Poe, who admitted to the fellow officer that she lied because she needed the money, received three years of probation as a result.
Promoted to chief in 2014
The former LAPD officer later joined the Baldwin Park Unified School District Police Department in 2006, was promoted to captain in 2011 and then to police chief in 2014. Both the district and Poe acknowledged in court filings that she disclosed her criminal history to the district prior to it becoming public.
“Superintendent (Froilan) Mendoza has known about Poe’s history with the LAPD and criminal charges since at least 2015,” wrote Carney Shegerian, Poe’s attorney, in her complaint.
Her past conviction, however, became public in late 2019 after a school police officer pulled over Cook for allegedly running a stop sign. Poe’s lawsuit alleges Cook emailed Superintendent Froilan Mendoza and requested the dismissal of his ticket, or he would publicly disclose Poe’s criminal past. Poe alleges Mendoza asked her to comply and became angry when the police chief refused.
Cook published a post about Poe’s conviction on his blog, the Legal Lens, about a month later. Cook has denied the allegations. The district has since dismissed the ticket and settled with Cook in a separate, but related case.
Lawyer: Poe targeted for sexual orientation
Poe, who sued in November 2019, maintains the district used the article as a pretext to retaliate against her for her sexual orientation and for reporting Cook’s alleged extortion attempt to school officials and the District Attorney’s Office. Other, more serious allegations against heterosexual employees resulted in comparatively lighter punishments, the lawsuit alleges.
“Yet Poe, who is a lesbian, is being targeted, and her employment has been actually and constructively terminated, despite the benign and outdated nature of the records and history that have recently resurfaced and despite the fact that BPUSD knew everything about it before hiring her,” her attorneys wrote.
Poe alleges she regularly faced harassment and discrimination, including from a board member who publicly stated that children need a “father and a mother” at board meetings attended by Poe.
Parts of claim dismissed
Broadbent will allow those parts of the claim to go forward, but he dismissed a claim of retaliation related to Poe’s reporting of the alleged extortion because the district admitted it placed Poe on leave solely to quell public outcry and not because of her conviction.
In 2019, a spokesperson said the district was investigating “the past work history of a member of our school police department,” but it turned out there was no actual investigation, according to the court filings. Despite this, the district never attempted to defend Poe in the media as part of its intentional infliction of emotional distress, Poe’s lawsuit alleges.
The judge’s ruling states BPUSD never believed Poe “did (something) wrong” and instead was simply trying to restore public trust by taking action against her. And because the district had “legitimate, independent reasons” to place Poe on leave, they would have done so regardless of her whistleblowing, Broadbent said in his explanation for the dismissal of one of the causes.
Poe was officially terminated in 2021 when the district, citing budget constraints, disbanded the entire police department.
