Campbell policewoman Margaret Leitz ran towards the gunfire on the 2019 Gilroy Garlic Competition mass capturing, rescued a lady who had been shot within the head and helped others escape over a five-foot fence.
For her heroism, Campbell’s police chief Gary Berg awarded Leitz a medal of valor.
However now she’s suing the the Metropolis of Campbell, its police division, and Berg over what she alleges was ongoing intercourse discrimination, and malicious harassment associated to an damage she suffered whereas saving festival-goers in Gilroy.
Town, police division and Berg didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon the lawsuit.
Leitz, 43, claims within the lawsuit filed Monday in Santa Clara County Superior Court docket that shortly after her hiring in 2012, her colleagues, almost all male, had been warned in a briefing that she was a “walking sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.”
As a heterosexual feminine, it was “automatically assumed” within the division that she would have intercourse with male co-workers regardless of her being in a monogamous relationship on the time, Leitz mentioned in a July assertion of declare in opposition to the Metropolis of Campbell.
As she rose in rank to grow to be a field-training officer, award-winning hostage negotiator, crime-scene technician, murder detective, and supervisor, she continued to be handled in another way as a result of she was a lady and sexism was “standard practice” within the division, her lawsuit alleged. Supervisors and fellow officers questioned her capacity to shoot and willingness to struggle combative suspects, and supervisors confirmed up at incidents solely so they may criticize her techniques, her lawsuit alleged.
“I always knew going into law enforcement that it was a male-dominated profession,” Leitz mentioned in an interview Wednesday. “I knew it was going to be an uphill battle and it was a challenge I was willing to accept.”
Figuring out her intercourse put her at a drawback, Leitz labored additional laborious to make arrests — greater than 800 over 10 years — and advance in her profession, she mentioned.
“I was a hard charger,” Leitz mentioned.
In her decade of lively obligation, Leitz pushed for, and ultimately achieved, adjustments together with bullet-proof vests designed for feminine officers, and weapons that may very well be tailored to suit feminine officers who’re smaller than males, mentioned Leitz, who stands five-foot-three and weighs 125 kilos.
“I didn’t always want to make waves but I was very vocal about the way women were treated differently,” Leitz mentioned. “The answer from Campbell for everything that was ever bought up is, ‘Hey, this is the way it always has been and this is the way it’s going to be.’”
Division members “repeatedly sexualized” Leitz, she claimed within the lawsuit. In 2014, a newly promoted sergeant took her apart and mentioned he had heard she and her boyfriend broke up. The sergeant “explained it’s common for female officers to have sex with male officers at their own agency, throughout the county, random men they met while on the job, or while away at trainings,” Leitz’s assertion mentioned.
The sergeant “made it clear that he didn’t want the City of Campbell to look bad because of my expected promiscuous behavior,” mentioned the assertion, filed as an exhibit with the lawsuit.
When she was promoted to supervisor, a fellow officer informed her she solely acquired the development as a result of she was feminine and “checked a box,” the lawsuit alleged.
In July 2019, Leitz was assigned to the Gilroy Garlic Competition as a part of a multi-department, mutual-aid police crew. She heard gunfire from 50 yards away, as the teenager with the assault rifle started the assault that killed three individuals and wounded 17.
“I was actually the first officer to run into the shooting,” Leitz mentioned.
She noticed a lady bleeding closely from a gunshot to the pinnacle, grabbed her, put her by a fence and informed her to carry her head collectively. Folks had been shouting, “Save me, save me,” and she or he pushed two youngsters over a five-foot fence, then she made a stirrup of her fingers to assist a number of giant adults comply with, Leitz mentioned.
The lady she had helped survived. The gunman, 19, was killed by police. Leitz, sooner or later within the chaotic rescue, badly re-injured her wrist that had been harm in a 2013 foot pursuit.
For greater than two years, Campbell and its advantages administrator denied her requests for orthopedic care, the lawsuit claimed. “During this time, Leitz was involved in approximately 10 violent altercations with suspects, aggravating the left wrist injury,” the lawsuit mentioned. Thirty-one months after the damage, she lastly had surgical procedure, the lawsuit mentioned.
“Tellingly, three male officers were promptly provided surgical treatment after injuries suffered during workouts,” the lawsuit alleged.
After she was “medically retired” due to her damage, the town and division filed a felony fraud grievance in opposition to her over her employee’s compensation claims, however the Santa Clara County District Legal professional’s workplace declined to put costs over the “malicious accusations,” the lawsuit claimed.
In the meantime, as Leitz, unable to work as a police officer due to her wrist, works part-time as a flight attendant, the town and division are blocking her official retirement and the California state advantages that include it, the lawsuit alleged. Technically nonetheless on the division’s payroll, she receives no pay, is borrowing cash to cowl prices, and, identified with post-traumatic stress dysfunction, wakes up incessantly at night time with panic assaults, she mentioned.
Leitz’s lawsuit accuses Campbell and its police division of intercourse discrimination, incapacity discrimination, harassment and retaliation.
She is in search of unspecified damages, and compensation for purported lack of wages and advantages.
Initially Revealed: October 16, 2024 at 4:15 p.m.
