{"id":158041,"date":"2026-01-31T14:10:42","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T14:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/158041\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T14:10:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T14:10:42","slug":"ex-cop-who-endured-racist-sexual-texts-reaches-1-7m-settlement-with-fresno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/158041\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-cop who endured racist, sexual texts reaches $1.7M settlement with Fresno"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> depicting genitals, racist stereotypes and homophobic jokes in work-related conversations.<\/p>\n

The City Council approved the settlement during a closed session meeting in November. Fresno Police Chief Mindy Casto declined to comment on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit was \u201camicably resolved,\u201d according to Szatmari\u2019s attorney, Nick Yasman of Los Angeles-based West Coast Employment Lawyers. He declined to comment further.<\/p>\n

Szatmari was promoted to sergeant of the K-9 and mounted patrol unit in September 2020, what her lawsuit had previously described as a \u201cdream job.\u201d<\/p>\n

A series of the text messages were released to The Bee in 2023, about six months after the lawsuit was filed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cOh yes! Stuff me! Stuff me real hard!\u201d the text says.<\/p>\n

Another in the same conversation showed a cooked bird with what appears to be a human penis between its legs, the lawsuit said. \u201cOur Turkey is already ready to Eat,\u201d a follow-up text says.<\/p>\n

A third image shows a closeup of a rooster with a pronounced wattle and makes a crude joke about male genitals.<\/p>\n

Days after being promoted, Szatmari was allegedly told by a lieutenant that the K-9 unit existed under \u201cVegas rules,\u201d referring to a tourism ad campaign in Las Vegas. \u201cWhat happens in the K-9 field, stays in and at the K-9 field,\u201d the lawsuit claimed the lieutenant said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit said Szatmari\u2019s 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\u2019s sister.<\/p>\n

Following the sex doll incident, a lieutenant told Szatmari, \u201cthe boys get to do what the boys get to do, no questions asked,\u201d the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit said the ordeal took a toll on her mental well-being, leading to panic attacks and anxiety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Fresno has agreed to pay $1.7 million to a police sergeant who said she endured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113,1057,72298,77151,77150,33458,77152],"class_list":["post-158041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-fresno-police-department","tag-police-sergeant","tag-racist-stereotypes","tag-stacie-szatmari","tag-text-messages","tag-the-city-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}