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Public Domain
By Nevya Patel
FRESNO, CA — After being allegedly subjected to a hostile work environment, racial and sexual discrimination, and additional improper treatment, Officer Amya Brooks resigned from her position at the Fresno Police Department, filing a complaint against the City of Fresno and Cpl. Gerald Sepeda, according to a West Coast Trial Lawyers statement.
“Ms. Brooks just wanted a chance to live out her dream of being a police officer free from such egregious abuse and harassment but, unfortunately, she chose the wrong department,” said West Coast Trial Lawyer plaintiff’s attorney Nicholas Yasman.
Yasman added, “The Fresno Police Department is currently a cesspool of disgusting behavior from the top down that no employee should be subjected to under any circumstances. The Fresno Police Department’s old guard has established a culture where the only behavior that’s frowned upon by top brass is ‘snitching’ on the illegal activities of fellow officers.”
Beginning as a cadet in May 2022 as one of three Black female officers out of 700 officers in the department, Brooks said she told a Black female sergeant about how comments—including one aimed at her that stated “just because you’re Black, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be handed to you” from a male lieutenant—made her “feel alienated, scared for the future of her employment and pressured to quit the job.”
The press statement released by the officer’s lawyers also claimed that another officer told Brooks, “Black females have a bad reputation in this department,” that they were “untrustworthy” and had “bad attitudes.”
It was also stated Brooks was labeled a “snitch” because she believed the sergeant informed their fellow officers of her complaints.
“The City of Fresno should read Ms. Brooks’ allegations as an opportunity to improve and to learn what’s really happening inside their police department…a systemic culture change is long overdue, as I suspect they already know,” Yasman added.
Four months after her promotion to officer in August 2022, Brooks said she was advertised as an African American female on the force to make her feel “targeted and alienated because of her skin color,” but also using her at public events so “the department could show off its diversity for the media.”
Instead of feeling empowered, Brooks said she felt as though she “needed to serve as a token minority whom the Department could outwardly showcase to meet diversity initiatives before the eyes of a skeptical public,” stated in the complaint.
Assigned as Brook’s training officer, defendant Sepeda allegedly remarked, when a call about a Black woman causing a disturbance arrived, “Another angry Black bitch—you can deal with this one.”
Brooks said she did not report the comments to anyone other than her supervisors, leaving her with feelings of “‘anxiety, disgust, humiliation, fear and hopelessness’” because her complaints were ignored, the filed complaint said.
The lawsuit also states defendant Sepeda filed an internal affairs complaint against Brooks in August 2023 for “insubordination,” again leaving Brooks feeling “harassed and abused, being told that she ‘should’ve shut up when Sepeda told you to shut up.’”
Assigned the night shift two months later, without a partner, when other officers on the same shift were assigned one, she responded to a shooting with a large crowd around her patrol car, experiencing “considerable anxiety and PTSD” although “physically unscathed,” the complaint charged.
Returning to duty in May 2024, the complaint added Brooks received “notice of another unfounded internal affairs investigation, this time regarding her conduct during the shooting incident, leaving her feeling as if the entire department was now conspiring against her.”
The next month Brooks resigned, and her last words to the Fresno Police Department in her resignation letter, her lawsuit notes, was the FPD “is simply not a safe place for women to work right now, especially not African American women.”
