By Thaddeus Miller
The Fresno Bee
FRESNO, Calif. — The city of Fresno has agreed to pay $1.7 million to a police sergeant who said she endured repeated sexual harassment and was wrongfully terminated when she tried to stop the persecution, officials confirmed on Wednesday.
Stacie Szatmari worked at the Fresno Police Department for nearly two decades before she was terminated in 2022, which followed strings of text messages over several months depicting genitals, racist stereotypes and homophobic jokes in work-related conversations.
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The City Council approved the settlement during a closed session meeting in November. Fresno Police Chief Mindy Casto declined to comment on Wednesday.
The lawsuit was “amicably resolved,” according to Szatmari’s attorney, Nick Yasman of Los Angeles -based West Coast Employment Lawyers. He declined to comment further.
Szatmari was promoted to sergeant of the K-9 and mounted patrol unit in September 2020, what her lawsuit had previously described as a “dream job.”
A series of the text messages were released to The Bee in 2023, about six months after the lawsuit was filed.
The text messages to the group thread included one of a turkey being stuffed by hand that has an animated face with its eyes wide open. “Oh yes! Stuff me! Stuff me real hard!” the text says.
Another in the same conversation showed a cooked bird with what appears to be a human penis between its legs, the lawsuit said. “Our Turkey is already ready to Eat,” a follow-up text says.
A third image shows a closeup of a rooster with a pronounced wattle and makes a crude joke about male genitals.
Days after being promoted, Szatmari was allegedly told by a lieutenant that the K-9 unit existed under “Vegas rules,” referring to a tourism ad campaign in Las Vegas. “What happens in the K-9 field, stays in and at the K-9 field,” the lawsuit claimed the lieutenant said.
The text messages in the lawsuit also listed a number of other instances involving officers in the same unit in which they shared racist stereotypes of Latinos and sent a barrage of homophobic accusations at one another.
The lawsuit said Szatmari’s attempts to end the inappropriate dialogue went nowhere, and often only intensified the harassment. Those included repetitive jokes about a sex doll during a work retreat for the unit and sexual references about the sergeant’s sister.
Following the sex doll incident, a lieutenant told Szatmari, “the boys get to do what the boys get to do, no questions asked,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said the ordeal took a toll on her mental well-being, leading to panic attacks and anxiety.
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