Despite being a young street cop trying to rise through the ranks in the Los Angeles Police Department in the mid-’90s, Kristine Klotz says she was quick to call out sexism on the job. Truth is right and wrong is wrong, he used to tell himself, knowing that he would ruffle a few feathers in the process.
So she didn’t hesitate to speak up last summer when she learned that a male supervisor in the exposed Robbery-Homicide Division where she worked had compared a female detective to a sex worker on Figueroa Street.
To make it in the LAPD, department veterans say, you need a thick skin. But Klotz, 54, said Figueroa’s comments were just the tip of the iceberg of the verbal abuse women have received in the unit.
Klotz said that after repeated complaints about her mistreatment at the hands of department officials were ignored, she and other female Robbery-Homicide detectives sought help from the Board of Police Commissioners, the LAPD’s civilian oversight body. For weeks, he had heard nothing.
The answer finally came, just not the way Klotz expected.
In a whistleblower lawsuit filed this year in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Klotz claims the LAPD retaliated against him. He said he was demoted, reassigned and subjected to an internal investigation within months.
The lawsuit accuses several current senior LAPD officials, including Deputy Chief Marc Reina, and Capts. Scot Williams and Robin Petillo from inflicting emotional distress and creating a hostile work environment. The suit names two women, Petillo and Lt. Blanca Lopez; other than the accused person. A follow-up letter to the Police Commission named the supervising detective who allegedly made Figueroa’s comments, Christopher Marsden.
Emails from The Times to the work accounts of officials selected in the suit were not returned.
The LAPD said it does not discuss pending litigation and referred questions to the city attorney’s office, which did not respond to an email seeking comment. A private law firm representing the defendants, including the city, asked the judge for more time before responding to Klotz’s lawsuit in court.
A 29-year veteran of the department with a tall list of criminal investigations to his name, Klotz said he had no choice but to return to the court system as he fought to restore his career and reputation. The months-long ordeal, he said, “opened my eyes to a very different way of thinking when it comes to the pride we have in this organization.”
Addressing persistent sexual-harassment complaints will be one of the issues facing incoming LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, who was appointed to the job this month, pending City Council approval. He will also be expected to review the disciplinary system that some argue seems to punish the accuser more than the accused.
Since 2019, the city of Los Angeles has paid out at least $11 million in compensation for gender-based discrimination, retaliation and other workplace disputes brought by LAPD officers, according to a Times review of data obtained through a public records request. That figure does not include at least $12 million in damages awarded by juries to women in the LAPD that the city appealed after having been defeated in court.
In addition, a dozen or more cases involving complaints by female officers about harassment and discrimination are still pending. Some of the previously unreported claims include a sergeant who said he was denied a transfer as “direct retaliation” for cooperating with an Internal Affairs investigation into a former assistant chief accused of planting a tracking device in the car of his former domestic partner, a fellow LAPD officer.
In another case, a car theft detective said she was abused by a male co-worker after their relationship fell apart. And at the Hollenbeck Division, which has been dealing with investigations and leadership changes in recent months, several sworn and civilian female employees said they faced retaliation for reporting wrongdoing.
While some longtime LAPD observers argue that decades of reports and court orders have forced the department to confront the problem, others, including civil rights attorney Connie Rice, say a culture of misogyny persists and that women in uniform continue to face barriers to advancement. .
Much of the abuse has been transferred online to pro-LAPD social media groups that display “a frat-boy kind of MAGA misogyny of things going on,” he said.
“I think the DNA of the culture is still ‘Women shouldn’t be here,'” Rice said. “There’s no welcome mat, more like a no-trespass mat.”
By the end of his time at Robbery-Homicide, Klotz said, he felt like he had a target on his back.
Klotz contends that he was told to perform menial tasks and forced to sign in when he left the office, like a high school kid asking for a hall pass. If she left to rinse the coffee cup or use the photocopier, she said, her supervisor would text her to let her know where she was. Then one day last summer, he showed up for work to find that his key card access had been revoked.
Determined not to take the humiliation of “sitting down,” Klotz and his colleague, Det. Jennifer Hammer, wrote a letter to the Police Commission in September 2023 asking for intervention in the “harassment, discrimination, and retaliation against her and other female officers.”
“These violations have not stopped and are getting worse,” the letter said. Hammer has filed his own complaint against the department.
Klotz has been the subject of at least two internal investigations. He said the complaints against him – one for allegedly making inappropriate gestures to other officers and the other for giving to civilian employees – were “made up” as a way of punishing him for speaking out.
In January, he was demoted to a lesser detective position, assigned to the auto theft unit in the San Fernando Valley. He took an 18% pay cut and now reports to a younger detective before being ordered to.
Despite his many years on the job, Klotz maintains an uncommonly cheerful demeanor. But her jaw clenches and her voice thickens with emotion when she describes the humiliation she felt walking into the Van Nuys police station for the first time earlier this year, and feeling the stares of her colleagues.
The past few months have been mentally tough, he said. He started smoking again, almost a decade after quitting cold turkey. More than once, she said, she has broken down and cried in her car outside of work.
“I never thought that at the end of my career, I would be subjected to the constant harassment, the retaliation that I was subjected to by upper management and commanding officers,” Klotz said.
Growing up in Long Beach on a steady diet of “Charlie’s Angels,” Klotz dreamed of becoming a law enforcement officer from an early age. His high school classes in court and law further piqued his interest. He said he had opportunities to work for other area departments in his 20s, but he got an offer from the LAPD.
His dream was always to become a detective, preferably to investigate murders. He eventually achieves his goal, joining the Valley area’s homicide unit. That leads to his first encounter with what he accuses of being a toxic culture.
Before blowing the whistle on Robbery-Homicide, Klotz was among a group of female detectives who denounced what she described as a frat-like atmosphere in the Valley, where some male colleagues were vulgar and abusive to women in the office.
Klotz and other women say they are often called “tourists” when they are not. One male detective is accused of sexually exploiting the wife of a current chief deputy and is accused of sending inappropriate emails from his work account to a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney.
The city has denied the allegations raised in the lawsuit, which is still pending in court.
Klotz said his experience on the case taught him to document everything, including numerous email requests sent to higher departments asking for intervention in Robbery-Homicide.
Like other women who have reported wrongdoing, she said she usually learned to tune out office gossip and rumors about her demotion. Some grapevine conversations have returned to her – how she cannon loose or stir the pot to cover up for complaints accused her of wrongdoing.
None of that is true, he said. And he’s not looking for a paycheck either, he said, contradicting other public criticism of the department’s whistleblowers.
Corinne Bendersky, a UCLA professor of management and organization who studies the work culture of Los Angeles city departments, said the handling of complaints by women and ethnic minorities is not isolated to the LAPD.
“Race relations are worse in the Police Department, gender relations are worse in the Fire Department,” said Bendersky, who conducted surveys, focus groups and interviews with thousands of city employees. He said the survey showed deep resentment across gender and racial lines against the Police Department’s continued efforts to hire more women and officers of color.
Klotz said the department conducted an investigation into her complaint and deemed it unfounded, despite evidence that she was the subject of retaliation for reporting wrongdoing by higher-ups.
Last week – after The Times inquired about her case – Klotz was summoned to a meeting with Deputy Chief Emada Tingirides. Klotz said he was informed that he was returning to his previous rank of detective, which reinstated his pay. He remains in the Valley, investigating car thefts.
He plans to retire at the end of the year, but Klotz said he will continue to fight in court to hold him accountable after years of the LAPD failing to improve.
“The damage is done, they have hurt me and they can’t take it back. They will never be able to fix me,” he said before his old rank was restored. “They ruined me at the end of my career.”
