Former SLO County Jail deputy fired for sexual harassment won’t get his job back
A former San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s correctional deputy who was fired for sexual harassment won’t get his job back after a judge denied his petition for reinstatement on Jan. 14.
Lars Luther was fired on Jan. 23, 2020, following a months-long investigation of sexual harassment against a female employee, according to court documents, which provide a detailed look into the accusations against him.
The incident was the final straw in a string of complaints and disciplinary actions taken against Luther over the course of five years that resulted in multiple sustained findings of misbehavior and a demotion.
Luther was the head of the correctional deputies’ union at the time he was demoted. He had worked at the Sheriff’s Office for nearly 30 years at the time he was fired.
According to the documents recounting the final incident, Luther walked by the female employee before he presented a training in October 2019 and swung his water bottle into her rear. She and Luther talked briefly as he walked by.
The woman noticed there were security cameras in the room and asked a sergeant to review the footage. The woman had been avoiding Luther since the first time she met him a year earlier, when Luther reportedly told her he “got in trouble for flirting” with her in front of inmates.
She said she did not report the comment at the time, despite coworkers telling her to do so, because Luther was a senior correctional deputy at the time and “had stripes.”
When a lieutenant told Luther he was being investigated for a sexual harassment complaint, he responded with “I just touched her back.” The lieutenant had not told Luther the complaint was about inappropriate touching at that time.
Luther told investigating officers that he did not know his water bottle had touched the woman until he saw the footage, and said he was looking at a patch on the woman’s jacket. He said he “tapped her like you tap somebody to get their attention or walk by.”
The woman described Luther’s actions as “predator-like” and “like he was trying to get away with something.”
9 allegations of misconduct against women
Luther’s termination was the fifth disciplinary action taken against him for his treatment of women in the workplace since 2015, the documents said. In total, nine allegations of misconduct had been made against him in those years, with four of them being sustained.
In one instance, Luther told a female coworker he would send her a selfie of his penis after she showed a selfie of her and her boyfriend to a group.
In another, he told a different female coworker, “If you are going to work with the big boys, put on your big girl panties,” after she asked him to take out a trashcan full of chewing tobacco spit. He blamed the women for having a “chip on her shoulder” for being offended.
A different time, he told a female coworker who he had asked to print something for him, “Hey, woman, why don’t you get your woman’s work done?” and called her a “skirt.”
When female coworkers were talking about distributing medication at one point, he approached them and said, “The grass was this high” while make a “Nazi-type salute” with his arm, the documents said. When the women did not understand his comment, he told them “it’s a white supremacist thing that you would not understand.” The woman told Luther she was offended because she is Jewish, and he said he was joking and did not mean to offend anyone.
In addition to the allegations, Luther also received a Letter of Reprimand in 2016 after screaming at a female coworker who was promoted above him, calling her “stupid,” a “moron” and a “f--king idiot.” He also told a captain to “grow a set of balls” and said the sheriff and undersheriff had “their heads so far up their ass,” the court documents showed.
Luther was previously demoted from his senior status as a correctional deputy, a rank he held for 26 years, after an internal complaint alleged he used excessive force on an inmate in 2019.
Despite his demotion, Luther’s total pay and benefits in 2019 was higher than it was in 2018, $208,000 vs. $189,964, according to Transparent California, a statewide database that tracks public employees’ salaries.
Luther said his termination was ‘abuse of discretion’
Luther appealed the decision to fire him soon after he was terminated, and an evidentiary hearing was held in June 2020. In July, the commission upheld the decision to fire Luther from the Sheriff’s Office. He then filed a petition soon after in an effort to reinstate him.
One of Luther’s main arguments involved the unreported incident in October 2018, where he made a comment about him getting in trouble for flirting with the woman in front of inmates.
According to court documents, he tried to discredit the woman and said that the incident should not be included in considering whether he should be fired. He claimed that evidence of his interaction with the woman the following year did not show that he had treated her disrespectfully and insinuated that if he had known the woman was uncomfortable around him, he would not have touched her rear with his water bottle, the court documents said.
Judge Tana Coates wrote in her decision to uphold Luther’s termination that touching a colleague’s rear with a water bottle is inappropriate regardless of whether the comment about flirting was made. She also noted that Luther had changed his story several times, first stating he only touched her back before later stating he just wanted to get her attention.
Luther claimed his termination was “excessive” and an “abuse of discretion.”
He said he had received satisfactory or above satisfactory performance reviews from 2015-2018, and that his disciplinary history does not show a pattern of harassment of women in the workplace because they had all happened four years prior to the October 2019 incident.
Coates wrote that four disciplinary actions in the last five years should have caused Luther to reevaluate his treatment of women in the workplace. She also said good performance ratings do not discount his pattern of behavior or his actions in October 2019.
Richard Levine, Luther’s attorney, told The Tribune that he and his client believe Luther’s firing was retaliation for “his vigorious activities” as the union president where he pursued “highly controversial working condition matters,” like ensuring deputies are given adequate breaks.
Luther’s petition was ultimately denied, and he will not be returning to work in the Sheriff’s Office. Levine said he and Luther are continuing to review their legal options.
This story was originally published January 20, 2022 at 10:30 AM.
