Lawsuit claims ‘pervasive’ gender discrimination at Pismo Beach Police Department
A $3.5 million lawsuit filed against the city of Pismo Beach and its police chief alleged that the Police Department — under the leadership of Chief Jeff Smith — fostered a hostile work environment with “pervasive” gender discrimination and whistleblower retaliation.
The city, however, told The Tribune the claims “have no basis in fact.”
Harmony Brown, a former administrative secretary to the chief of police, alleged she endured 20 months of “systemic, continuous, deliberate and illegal retaliation” — including at least 38 documented incidents — after she reported concerns about a disagreement with a male commander and other gender discrimination allegations within the department in March 2023.
Brown said she was ultimately forced to resign in November 2024 and painted as a disgruntled employee.
City manager Jorge Garcia told The Tribune that the city commissioned two separate and independent investigations into Brown’s claims and found them to be unsubstantiated.
“It is unfortunate to have meritless allegations launched at dedicated public servants, but we will proceed with the robust defense of this matter,” Garcia said.
The lawsuit claims the investigations by the city omitted key allegations, failed to interview key witnesses and did not have an impartial fact-gathering process.
Brown sued the city and Smith for retaliation, gender discrimination, hostile work environment, failure to investigate or prevent discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress and declaratory judgment.
While the amount requested in the lawsuit is unlimited, Brown said she has lost more than $524,000 in earnings and suffered no less than $3 million of emotional and mental anguish and distress, pain and suffering, as well as additional expenses she incurred due to medical conditions aggravated by the stress she endured.
Issues began with a conflict in March 2023
According to the lawsuit, Harmony Brown began her career in law enforcement in 1997 and by 2020, she was promoted to administrative secretary for Smith, where she provided direct support to multiple command staff and acted as a liaison between sworn personnel, civilian staff, City Hall and community stakeholders.
Brown regularly received positive feedback informally and formally while working at the department, the lawsuit said, including a card from Smith that read, “Simply stated, you are great! It’s a pleasure working with you and I am very thankful you are my administrative assistant.”
The lawsuit said Smith gave Brown an “excellent” evaluation on her performance review on March 6, 2023, and on March 23, 2023, Smith petitioned the City Council to promote her to executive assistant to the chief.
That treatment changed suddenly, however, when she formally reported her concerns about gender discrimination within the agency, the lawsuit said.
On March 24, 2023, the lawsuit said, Brown and Pismo Beach Police Commander Daniel Herlihy had a conflict in which Herlihy “berated (Brown) for ‘petty’ interruptions, aggressively asserted his rank, attempted to physically intimidate (Brown) and ended the conversation abruptly and angrily.”
Three days later on March 27, Brown reported the incident to Garcia, who at the time was the city’s director of human resources, the lawsuit said.
She also reported general workplace hostility and discrimination based on gender, citing disparate treatment by the Police Department of female and LGBTQ+ employees, sexist stereotyping, exclusion from decision-making spaces and targeted hostility by police command staff.
Specifically, the lawsuit said, Brown reported that Police Department officials, including Smith, discredited her concerns by branding her as “hysterical” and “petty” or accusing her of “blowing things out of proportion.”
Brown said they also warned her that speaking up would damage her reputation by relating an “instructive story” about what they called a “power-hungry former secretary.” They also blamed Brown for male coworkers’ inappropriate conduct.
Transgender officer also faced harassement, lawsuit says
The lawsuit said several other employees corroborated Brown’s experience of a “pervasive culture of gender-based hostility, retaliatory transfers and selective discipline for those who spoke up.”
Particularly under Smith’s leadership, the lawsuit said, whistleblowers and women who resisted inappropriate behavior were subjected to “surveillance, exclusion and career sabotage.”
The lawsuit said several individuals who experienced discrimination within the agency were willing to testify.
That included a transgender male community services technician and parking officer being surveilled, mocked, assigned unsafe equipment and eventual terminated after his gender identity was revealed, the lawsuit said.
Specifically, the transgender officer’s gender identity was reported to administrative staff when a coworker discovered he was born as female, the lawsuit said. Administrative staff then shared the information with staff members the same day, “for no reasonable purpose but as a form of gossip,” the lawsuit said.
In reaction to the information, Brown heard Cmdr. Herlihy say “No wonder he’s so dramatic,” and Cmdr. Chris Trimble began questioning the parking officer’s performance and threatened discipline, the lawsuit said.
After the employee’s gender identity was disclosed, the employee was assigned a vehicle with nonfunctioning airbags, horns, lights and siren, the lawsuit said. When the employee reported it, he was told “he should walk his patrol if he was ‘too afraid’ to operate the vehicle.”
The employee was terminated shortly after that incident, the lawsuit said.
Female dispatchers also described chronic understaffing, denial of breaks for women, unequal treatment between male and female employees, punitive scheduling after pregnancy or part-time requests, and unfair removal of duties, the lawsuit said.
One female dispatcher claimed management dismissed women’s concerns, asked candidates “invasive inquiries” about pregnancies when hiring and threatened discipline when female employees sought policy clarification.
When a female former dispatcher asked for a private space to pump after having a child in 2015, the lawsuit said, she was told she could use the conference room but the door had to remain open so she could hear dispatch, despite someone being assigned to cover her during pump breaks.
The former dispatcher was later told by her supervisor Anita Channell that she was denied a position to be a SWAT dispatcher because the department was afraid she “would not be available because of childcare” despite never having childcare responsibilities affect her availability or ability to do her job, the lawsuit said.
In addition, according to the lawsuit, when female officers were placed on “light duty” for any physical condition, they would be assigned to work in dispatch while male officers placed on “light duty” would be assigned to desk positions, including investigations.
At least one female police officer who was pregnant specifically asked to be assigned to investigations but was instead assigned to dispatch and had her probationary period for being promoted to corporal extended, the lawsuit said.
Around the same time, a male officer who was also promoted to corporal did not have his probationary period extended when he requested to use FMLA, the lawsuit said.
Pismo Beach police chief gave employee the finger, lawsuit alleges
When Brown told Smith about her report the following day, Smith “responded angrily” and accused her of betrayal, saying the report would have a “negative impact on the team,” the lawsuit said.
“The city’s response was not to investigate, but to retaliate, isolate, punish and silence,” the lawsuit said.
Brown documented 38 specific incidents in which she said city leaders and Smith retaliated against her because of her complaint.
The lawsuit said Smith and his command staff isolated Brown, and within three days, her calendar was restricted, which cut off Brown from her core job duties. Soon after, the lawsuit said, she was excluded from staff meetings and command briefings.
When Brown reported the calendar restriction to Garcia, he told her the change in treatment and the removal of calendar permissions did not meet the standard for retaliation, but he promised to arrange training on gender bias.
According to the lawsuit, Smith’s retaliation against Brown escalated as 2023 progressed.
This included coworkers being told they would “undermine trust” if they associated with her and her calendar being manipulated without her knowledge, which caused her to miss appointments that were then used to justify disciplinary warnings.
Brown was reprimanded for raising issues male coworkers spoke freely about, was belittled in front of staff, was referred to as “too sensitive” and “hard to work with,” and had her input excluded from reports she previously managed alone, the lawsuit said.
On May 23, 2023, the lawsuit said, Brown confronted Smith about his constant monitoring and told her she felt like she was being targeted as a result of her gender bias complaint. Smith was upset and accused Brown of disparaging his reputation by making the complaint, while at the same time admitting to over-monitoring her, the lawsuit said.
The next day, Smith apologized and said he did things “he wasn’t proud of” but also told Brown their “conflict,” which the lawsuit said referred to her gender bias report, would likely “come down to one of us losing our job.”
In September 2023, the lawsuit said, the city launched a separate investigation into Brown, alleging she committed “willful acts of misconduct outside duty hours,” which was later found to be unfounded.
The city began the investigation into Brown’s gender bias allegations in October 2023 — six months after Brown made her report. The investigation was determined to be “overruled,” the lawsuit said. That report was released in November 2023.
Smith issued a written reprimand against Brown in December 2023 based on a “hearsay conversation” between her and Channell, the dispatch supervisor, who was a close colleague of Smith, the lawsuit said. The same conversation was used as justification for low scores in Brown’s evaluation in October 2023.
According to the lawsuit, Channell was “known to put other women down to gain favor with Chief Smith” and began making false reports about Brown to Smith.
An investigation by the city eventually found Brown’s reasons for speaking with Channell were valid, the lawsuit said.
City human resources praised Brown’s professionalism in a private meeting where they “pressed” her to take an open position in the community development department because Smith was unwilling to work with her, the lawsuit said.
If Brown accepted the offer, she would have been demoted, paid less, forced to give up her law enforcement career goals, be more vulnerable to being fired and have no recourse, the lawsuit said.
Six days after Brown rejected the transfer, Smith issued her a written warning “using manufactured and unverified evidence from a witness who was not reachable,” the lawsuit said.
Brown’s review scores also didn’t make sense, the lawsuit said. For example, the review said she continued to be punctual in her assigned hours and used time off appropriately without any issues in that area, but she received a three out of five score in that section.
Brown claims she was “fully marginalized” by February 2024, with her daily assignments being clerical tasks beneath her pay grade.
On February 8, 2024, she filed a grievance at the request of her union representative regarding her extended employment probation. That same day she was removed from working on the annual report project, the lawsuit said.
Less than a month later, Brown was notified she would be demoted without an explanation, the lawsuit said. When she objected to the demotion, she was told she had an “attitude problem” and that she was “not a good cultural fit anymore.”
Smith’s “campaign of retaliation” was pervasive, intentional and designed to drive Brown out of her career in law enforcement, the lawsuit said.
On March 21, 2024, Brown shared with human resources multiple documented conversations she had with Smith about new “rules of heightened surveillance” that no other employee was subjected to.
Finally, on March 28, 2024, Smith and human resources placed Brown on administrative leave pending investigation into “vague misconduct claims,” the lawsuit said.
As Brown was escorted off the property, she stopped by Smith’s office to say goodbye and tell him what a privilege it was to serve with the Pismo Beach Police Department.
“Chief Smith ignored (Brown) then pointedly gave her the finger,” the lawsuit said.
Employee resigns ‘under extreme duress,’ while city claims she had explicit emails
Since the time Brown filed her union grievance in February 2024 through November 2024, when she was “forced to resign under extreme duress,” Smith and the city “systematically and deliberately exerted coercive pressure” over her to accept a demotion or resign.
On Nov. 27, 2024, the city told Brown she would be terminated that day. Brown resigned at 3:59 p.m. that day, just before the city’s formal deadline of 5 p.m.
“This resignation was not voluntary — it was the culmination of months of retaliatory conduct designed to push her out,” the lawsuit said.
The city “falsely claimed” Brown had “gigabytes of sexually explicit emails” on her work email account, but that claim was never substantiated, the lawsuit said.
Meanwhile, the only proactive effort the city took from March 2023 to November 2024 to address Brown’s gender discrimination allegations was to arrange a mandatory gender bias training for police staff — which Smith refused to attend, according to the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, the state ruled in April 2025 that Brown qualified for unemployment benefits because it found she was “constructively discharged,” which means she resigned because her working conditions were so intolerable or hostile a reasonable person would feel forced to resign.
The two investigations by the city into Brown’s allegations — one report in November 2023 and the other in August 2024 — were “irreconcilably inconsistent and procedurally flawed,” according to the lawsuit.
The November investigation found Brown to be credible, acknowledged unconscious bias and recommended unconscious bias and harassment training, the lawsuit said. The August investigation found Brown was “not credible,” substantiated multiple misconduct violations against her and concluded no training or systemic reforms were necessary, the lawsuit said.
“Neither investigator interviewed key witnesses or produced supporting documentation,” the lawsuit said, adding that each selectively emphasized different incidents.
The November 2023 investigation omitted serious misconduct allegations while the August 2024 investigation disregarded biased comments such as “Am I acting like a little girl?”
It is unclear from the lawsuit who in the department said that comment.
“These contradictions — and the absence of a full, impartial fact-gathering process — undermine the integrity of both reports, expose pretext and support an inference of retaliatory motive,” the lawsuit alleged.
Ultimately, Brown said, the stress she endured during this time exacerbated her symptoms of multiple sclerosis, a chronic neurological condition. Her doctors attribute her worsening condition, which included increased flare-ups, decline in motor function and increase in medication, to the stress she was experiencing at her employment.
“This medical evidence is devastating,” the lawsuit said. “(Brown) did not just suffer emotional harm and mental distress, her neurological condition deteriorated substantially, possibly irreversibly, as a result of intentional, deliberate and illegal retaliation by the city and Chief Smith.”
The city and Smith were aware of her medical condition at the time of the alleged retaliation, the lawsuit said.
This story was originally published August 14, 2025 at 10:00 AM.
