EVERETT — Four Denney Juvenile Justice Center employees allege their working environment featured a pattern of racial bias that included hostility and “sham investigations” into workers of color, according to lawsuits filed against the county last month.
The two separate lawsuits in King County Superior Court claim the bias from white managers and co-workers dates back to 2014, when the employees reported they complained to higher-ups about racial discrimination from white colleagues. In response, they were placed on a leave of absence or became the subject of internal investigations, according to the lawsuits.
“The defendant acts swiftly to respond to complaints made by white employees about employees of color, whereas the reverse is not true,” the lawsuit says.
Paul Woods, the lawyer who represents all four plaintiffs, declined to comment.
Snohomish County’s chief civil deputy prosecutor Bridget Casey acknowledged receiving the complaint and also declined comment.
“This has been an ongoing issue that began years ago,” said Adrian Stubblefield, another Denney employee who in October settled a similar claim with Snohomish County for $106,646 after he alleged racial hostility in the juvenile center. Stubblefield began working at Denney in 2007.
“Black men, and people of color, have been harassed and subjected to discriminatory treatment since at least January 2014,” Stubblefield wrote in his damage claim.
One of the two most recent complaints comes from former Denney employees Luther Weathersby and Ashley Thomas , two Black staffers who began working in the juvenile center in 1997 and 2000, respectively.
In 2014, Weathersby, Thomas and former Everett City Council member Ron Gipson, a Black man who was a guard at Denney, complained to management about discrimination.
However, their supervisors took no further action, according to the lawsuit. Shortly after, female workers at Denney accused supervisors and colleagues of sexual harassment in the workplace, identifying Gipson by name. In response, the three filed a complaint accusing their co-workers of orchestrating a smear campaign against them.
Gipson denied the allegations as “absolutely not true.” In 2015, The former city council member acknowledged engaging in “locker room talk,” but denied physically harassing women.
In 2018, an investigation into sexual harassment at Denney, with Gipson at the forefront, ended in a $750,000 settlement for the accusers.
In April 2021, management placed Thomas, a supervisor, on administrative leave “based on meritless and vague complaints about his body language and management style,” from two white subordinates, the lawsuit alleges.
Thomas was reportedly not allowed to work for six months while investigators at Denney looked into the claims.
Upon his return to work, the administration put Thomas on a performance improvement plan that taught “different procedures” on how to interact with his subordinates, according to court papers. Supervisors reportedly told Thomas his subordinates had found him “unapproachable” and “too strict.”
Thomas was again placed on administrative leave after disciplining a group of night shift employees who did not show up to a training session, according to the lawsuit.
The supervisor could not work while investigators conducted “a months’ long sham investigation” into the matter, according to the complaint.
The second lawsuit comes from Astrid Colon Torres and Adam Nieves, two Hispanic employees at Denney who claim they also became the subject of investigations when reporting discrimination from their white colleagues and supervisors.
Colon Torres, who began working at Denney in 2021, alleges white employees created a hostile work environment after she was promoted. At a diversity, equity and inclusion meeting, Colon Torres recalled one white co-worker saying she will “throw resumes in the trash” if she could not pronounce their name, the lawsuit alleges.
Colon Torres then confronted the employee, who reportedly became “combative,” the lawsuit says. Colon Torres complained to management, but was told she was under investigation, according to court documents.
Nieves, who was hired in 2016, claims he was the subject of a hostile work environment “created by white female coworkers.”
In October 2021, Nieves complained to his manager about a coworker sleeping on the job three nights in a row. But the supervisor told him the camera footage “didn’t show definitively whether her eyes were closed or not,” according to court documents.
Supervisors then told Nieves he was under investigation due to complaints from other staff that were not made clear to him, according to the lawsuit.
The next month, Nieves filed a complaint against his supervisors claiming they conducted sham investigations into employees of color. Nieves did not hear back from investigators until April 2022, when he was told they “found no evidence of wrongdoing after their six-month investigation.”
Maya Tizon: 425-334-3939; maya.tizon@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @mayatizon.
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