White, Lesbian Police Officer Suing Police Department For Discrimination

In this topsy turvey world where up is down and ‘reverse discrimination‘ is apparently a thing now, a white lesbian police officer is suing the Michigan State Police for, you guessed it, discrimination.

In suing, Sergeant Larissa LaMay is claiming that the Michigan State Police is “drunk on diversity” after she lost a promotion for the position of Assistant Post Commander to a black officer  in January 2020.

This is not the first time the Michigan State Police have been sued this year for this reason and the rash of lawsuits seemed to have been in reaction to comments reportedly made by State Police Director Joseph Gasper at a public meeting in October 2019. During the meeting Gasper said the agency, which is 90% white and 91% male – was “way too white and way too male.”

New diversity initiatives included setting aside 25% of future job openings for minorities, and 20% for females.

According to LaMay, this comment coming from “the top official of a para-military organisation” constitutes “standard operating procedure, a pattern and practice of racial preferences designed to favour blacks over whites at all levels of the agency.”

 LaMay states that she was passed over for the promotion in January and that the colleague who did get the position had previously been “disciplined for failing to show up for work and falsifying records to conceal it.”

Her lawsuit also claims that her supervisor, Keyonn Whitfield is openly homophobic and subjected her to anti-gay rhetoric during a meeting in 2019.

“At a mandatory Metro North Post sergeants meeting on November 20, 2019, Defendant Whitfield… expounded 6-7 times on the oddity of a gay law enforcement officer,” the lawsuit said. “Whitfield’s comments made (LaMay), who is gay, extremely uncomfortable.

“Whitfield’s bias against gay employees was laid bare in the presence of 10 sergeants and one lieutenant, yet nobody reported the comments until five months later,” the suit claimed.

In a weird coincidence, in addition to LaMay’s case, the other three discrimination lawsuits that have been filed by white MSP employees since May, have all been represented by the same attorney, Mr Jim Fett.

 In May, Fett filed two lawsuits on behalf of MSP employees who claimed they’d been disciplined or fired for speaking out against the agency’s Affirmative Action efforts.

“The Michigan State Police (MSP) is drunk on diversity. So drunk that they are using illegal means (racial and gender preferences) to achieve it,” wrote LaMay’s attorney in an email to Detroit News.

MSP Lt. Michael McCormick, who is white, took the MSP and Gasper to court in August, claiming in his lawsuit that state police officials “tied command bonuses to discriminating against white males.”

LaMay’s lawsuit seeks $75,000 in damages.