A Black sheriff’s deputy has sued the Marin County Sheriff’s Office for racial discrimination, alleging that he has been repeatedly harassed and passed over for promotions due to his race during 11 years on the force.
In a complaint filed in Marin County Superior Court last week, Deputy Sheriff David Lundie alleged that the all-white command staff subjected him to unfair discipline, biased performance reviews, racial tokenism and micromanagement. After he suggested the department needed more diverse leadership, department commanders retaliated against him, singling him out with frivolous complaints about his performance, the suit alleges.
Of the department’s over 200 deputy sheriffs, only five are Black, the suit states. Two of the five were hired in August 2022, several months after Mr. Lundie informed the department that he planned to file an employment discrimination complaint. The sheriff’s office has not promoted a single Black deputy since Mr. Lundie was hired in 2012, and he has applied for a promotion seven times.
“This lawsuit should serve as a wake-up call,” Mr. Lundie’s attorney, Jennifer Reisch, said in a written statement. “Racial discrimination is rampant throughout Marin institutions and culture, and the Sheriff’s Office is no exception. Make no mistake about it: this is not an isolated incident, and the MCSO needs to urgently revamp its practices and procedures to put an end to the racial bias that permeates its culture.”
Sheriff Jamie Scardina and County Counsel Brian Washington declined the Light’s requests to comment on the suit, saying they had not yet seen it.
“The county will review it carefully when it comes in and respond in court,” Mr. Washington said. “The county is an equal opportunity employer with no tolerance for discrimination or racism.”
The suit asserts that white deputies were repeatedly promoted ahead of Mr. Lundie, who has nearly 25 years of experience, even though he outscored many of them on internal tests and received outstanding performance reviews. And even as they harassed him, the suit says, the brass would trot him out on public occasions where it was beneficial for the department to appear inclusive. On the anniversary of the death of George Floyd, for example, Mr. Lundie was asked to represent the department at a community event called “Difficult Conversations With A Black Man.”
Most of the incidents described in the suit occurred during the tenure of former Sheriff Robert Doyle, who retired last June, but some allegedly took place under Sheriff Scardina, who ran uncontested for the office last year.
During the 2016 promotion cycle, Sheriff Doyle convened a meeting of captains and lieutenants to discuss candidates for promotion to sergeant, including Mr. Lundie. Among those attending was Lt. Cheryl Fisher, the only Black supervisor employed by the department over the last 11 years, according to the suit.
Sheriff Scardina, then a captain, and his brother, Capt. Craig Scardina, then a lieutenant, repeatedly derided Mr. Lundie during the session, calling him a “slug” and “lazy,” according to the suit. The Scardina brothers allegedly mocked Mr. Lundie for spending too much time at the Martin Luther King Library in Marin City, a community in which 26 percent of residents are Black. Ms. Fisher pointed out that Mr. Lundie had received excellent performance reviews and told the group that such derisive comments were unfair and inappropriate.
The suit alleges that Mr. Lundie was repeatedly written up for nonexistent infractions or for minor infractions that white deputies had committed without consequence. In one instance, he was reprimanded for calling in sick at the outset of the pandemic, before vaccines were widely available. He was also written up for staying home to care for his sick 9-year-old daughter, even though he informed the department 20 hours in advance.
Before coming to Marin, Mr. Lundie worked as a deputy in Humboldt County for 13 years, where he was promoted to corporal and recognized as “Deputy of the Year” in 2008. He served as an associate faculty member at the College of the Redwoods and was a training officer at the campus police academy.
But in Marin, the suit states, he was never given opportunities to advance, even though he had earned them.
Distraught and stressed by the harassment, last December Mr. Lundie took a medical leave under the California Family Rights Act and informed the county’s human resources department that he would be absent for several weeks. Nevertheless, two days later, he received a phone message informing him that he was scheduled to work that morning. According to the suit, he didn’t listen to the message because it came from an unknown number. The shift was due to begin 10 minutes after the message came in.
Two hours later, a deputy arrived at his house to summon him to work.
“M.C.S.O.’s disproportionate and humiliating response to plaintiff not reporting to work for a shift that he had no idea and no reason to believe had been scheduled exacerbated plaintiff’s stress, interfered with plaintiff’s protected medical leave, and undermined his efforts to recover,” the suit alleges.
Lisa Bennett, a Sausalito civil rights activist, said the allegations must be taken seriously. She was a plaintiff in a previous lawsuit filed against the sheriff’s office to prevent it from sharing license plate data with out-of-state and federal law enforcement agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I would hope that Sheriff Scardina uses this as an opportunity to lean into what is apparently a problem within his department,” said Ms. Bennett, who co-chairs I.C.E. Out of Marin. “The bias we see in policing Black and brown people is also endemic in the office itself. Black officers are feeling it.”