Deputy Andrew Rodriguez is empty-handed in nearly six years when a ju judge awarded him $8.1 million in a lawsuit alleging he was harassed for reporting fraud within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office.
When the award collapsed, the Sheriff’s Office said it was planning to “sue fiercely.” Three years later, the California Court of Appeals ordered a new trial, finding that the former judge had made the mistake by giving too broad ju-gai directions.
Last week, LA County Superior Court Judge Amen Tamzalian dismissed the case for four days after the retrial. At the request of Rodriguez’s lawyer.
reason? He said his client made a mistake while testifying, and that the 2022 High Court decision made it impossible for the ju to be revised without opposing him.
In a statement to the Times, lawyer Alan Romero called the request to dismiss the case a “difficult decision.” He found that the Court of Appeals has stated that the claims relating to illegal police are governed by another law, but the Court of Justice found that evidence exists in favour of all of his client’s claims.” He said.
Mira Hashmall, the county’s representative attorney, looked at the dimming of Rodriguez’s allegations.
“The evidence showed that he repeatedly violated departmental policies and made false statements to the supervisor,” Hashmall, Miller Barodes’ partner, told The Times. “Rodriguez voluntarily dismissed the entire lawsuit on the fourth day of his trial, under prejudice.”
In an emailed statement, the Sheriff’s Office similarly praised the fire, calling the allegations “baseless” and said there was “no harassment or retaliation.”
“The department enforces strict policies against retaliation, harassment and discrimination and will not tolerate such conduct,” the statement said.
The claim at the heart of the case is dated in 2013, when Rodriguez, who worked in county jails and courts for several years, began training to become a patrol representative for the Industrial Sheriff’s Office.
During his training, Rodriguez began to believe that his training officer was separating people without a reasonable doubt of misconduct, according to the case descriptions mentioned in the Court of Appeals’ decision. Rodriguez said at the first trial that the training officers had instructed them to lie in the arrest report.
According to the Court of Appeal, Rodriguez’s next training officer told him “seek a grab” anyone on the street after dark.
Rodriguez then worked with another lieutenant. According to the Court of Appeals, when Rodriguez reported the threat, he was moved to work in the station prison.
In August 2014, the court said Rodriguez had met with the then captain, the station’s top police officer. Murakami threatened to open his internal investigation if he did not return or return to prison work.
A few days later, Murakami wrote to the Captain of Human Resources, asking whether Rodriguez would be forced to undergo a psychological assessment to determine fitness to his obligations, and saying, “Patterns of behavior that demonstrates honest issues and /or fundamental medical/mental health issues.”
When he testified at trial in 2019, Murakami said there was no merit in the allegations against the training officer, and he denied retaliation against Rodriguez. County lawyers said Rodriguez had not prepared the ju judges for the strictness of patrol training.
In October 2014, Rodriguez took medical leave. While he was out, the department began multiple internal investigations on him. One was related to repeated absences, and the other focused on allegations that he had been working on unapproved external work at Disneyland during medical leave.
The third focused on concerns about whether police action was undertaken in 2015 when he detained someone who appeared to huff gas from an air conditioning unit near his home while sparing his duties. .
According to the Court of Appeal, the Sheriff’s Office investigated Rodriguez, stopped him, sent investigators to his home, told his neighbor he was in trouble, stationed an undercover car outside his home, and said that Disneyland managers were in trouble. He told me he visited the doctor’s office and visited. His medical records.
“The ju-degrees could reasonably conclude that these actions were not necessary for personnel management and instead constituted serious and widespread harassment,” the court wrote.
However, Rodriguez sued under the state’s fair employment and housing law, saying that the court prohibits harassment based on disability, but not harassment based on retaliation for opposition to illegal policing. Ta.
“During a 2025 retrial on the remaining disability claims, Andrew Rodriguez testified to the truth that Rep. Murakami illegally threatened him to fire him without legal basis,” Romero told The Times. “Rodriguez testified that this threat occurred in September 2014. Rodriguez quickly realized that he was wrong and that the threat of firing occurred in September 2013.
The High Court said the Ju Court could not consider a request for retaliation, so the judge could tell the Ju Court that the testimony was not true, but in any way he could explain it, Romero said. I stated. This prompted the ju umpire who said Rodriguez had “full production of the threat of firing” to demand Romero be fired “with an indelible impression.”
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