{"id":227516,"date":"2026-03-19T22:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T22:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/227516\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T22:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T22:10:09","slug":"lawsuit-details-toxic-police-watchdog-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/227516\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit details toxic police watchdog agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former employee of the Department of Police Accountability is suing the agency, accusing its chief of misappropriating funds, failing to address racist text messages, and crossing professional boundaries by holding a strip show at work and showing a picture of a sex toy.<\/p>\n

In the lawsuit (opens in new tab)<\/a>, filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court, Janelle Caywood claims she was fired from the watchdog agency by Executive Director Paul Henderson as retaliation for raising the issues with the city. Caywood was employed by the agency from December 2018 to August 2025 as an attorney and policy director.<\/p>\n

The civilian-staffed agency is tasked with investigating police misconduct and officer-involved shooting incidents, reviewing police policies, and auditing the SFPD. But the DPA\u2019s own internal culture has been called into question amid resignations, firings, and claims of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Caywood\u2019s complaint describes an environment of favoritism, retaliation, and off-color jokes that often veered into harassment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Soon after starting at the agency, Caywood claims, her boss, Henderson, gave hemorrhoid medication to his receptionist as a joke during an office holiday party. A few months later, Henderson told Caywood about a sex party his ex-partner took part in and punctuated the anecdote by showing her an image of a dildo, the suit says. In 2023, Caywood claims, Henderson organized a drag queen strip show at the office and told interns to bring dollar bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AHenderson has led the DPA since 2018. | Source: Jeremy Chen\/The Standard<\/p>\n

Caywood, who says she suffers from PTSD, claims Henderson and another manager, Nicole Armstrong, joked about her disability by saying she had hidden in a bathroom during a fire alarm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After an all-hands meeting at which employees were encouraged to express their concerns in a \u201csafe space,\u201d Caywood says, she was fired for alleged insubordination and being argumentative and disrespectful.<\/p>\n

Soon after her firing, Caywood claims, staff at the agency lost confidence in Henderson\u2019s leadership. Members of an SFPD working group wrote to the head of the Police Commission to ask that she be reinstated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some Department of Police Accountability employees have defended Henderson. In a letter (opens in new tab)<\/a> from August, nearly a dozen staffers wrote to Mayor Daniel Lurie and Paul Yep, who was serving as interim police chief, describing Henderson as exhibiting \u201cexemplary leadership\u201d and claiming that a \u201csmall minority of employees\u201d were seeking to undermine the executive director.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Henderson, who has led the agency since 2018, denied wrongdoing. \u201cI categorically deny the allegations made against me and find them offensive to my reputation and proven work history. The city will respond vigorously to this lawsuit in court,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for Caywood declined to comment. A spokesperson for the city attorney\u2019s office, Jen Kwart, said only, \u201cOnce we are served, we will review the complaint and respond in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the lawsuit, Caywood claims her issues with management began after she was promoted to policy director. She repeatedly reported to the Police Commission that the department was regularly late in updating SFPD policies and had failed to alert the commission after creating new rules on covert social media accounts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Caywood\u2019s lawsuit, filed Tuesday, alleges a toxic workplace. | Source: Morgan Ellis\/The Standard<\/p>\n

Her actions, the suit alleges, led to Henderson demoting her in retaliation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While working in a new role as a team attorney for a group of investigators, Caywood faced harassment from her supervisor, Diana Rosenstein, the suit claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Caywood claimed Rosenstein unfairly targeted her team of mostly minority employees with biased criticism. She said that her complaints were ignored and that Rosenstein told coworkers she hoped Caywood would quit. When confronted, Rosenstein allegedly said, \u201cDon\u2019t bother going to [Henderson] \u2014 he doesn\u2019t care, and I\u2019m not going anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

In October 2023, Rosenstein allegedly submitted under Caywood\u2019s name a disciplinary report about an SFPD officer. Caywood claimed she had nothing to do with the report and notified Chief of Staff Sharon Woo and Chief Assistant Attorney Marshall Khine, but no action was taken.<\/p>\n

Woo, Khine, Armstrong, and Rosenstein did not respond to repeated requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Following a November 2024 settlement conference at which Police Commission President Judge Clay disagreed with Rosenstein about an allegation made against an officer, Caywood received racist text messages from Rosenstein about Clay, the suit claims. Caywood\u00a0 alleges that Rosenstein wrote that the commissioner was an \u201cUncle Tom,\u201d and \u201cHe and Clarence Thomas can go to hell.\u201d Rosenstein\u2019s text also said that it was \u201cdisappointing to see a black man act like this. He should be ashamed,\u201d according to the suit.<\/p>\n

Caywood reported the text messages, and the city\u2019s Department of Human Resources opened an investigation. Caywood claims that when Rosenstein resigned in December 2024 amid these scandals, agency leadership blamed her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At one point, Caywood felt Woo was intimidating her and asked to be moved to reduce contact with her boss. Soon after, Caywood wrote to the mayor and the head of the city\u2019s HR department to inform them about the toxic work environment at the DPA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The suit says Caywood filed a whistleblower complaint with the city in February 2025, alleging a toxic workplace and claiming that Henderson misappropriated funds. She accused Henderson of diverting funds intended for other purposes to his friends in the department through raises. One of the people who allegedly received the funds was his chief of staff, Woo. Caywood gave a city investigator billing records backing up her claim, the lawsuit says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The suit is the latest example of tumult at the DPA. In July 2024, an anonymous staff survey obtained by The Standard<\/a> described a hostile, cutthroat agency akin to the TV show \u201cGame of Thrones.\u201d According to a survey conducted by the department\u2019s union, SEIU 1021, nine of the 13 investigators reported that the agency\u2019s workplace was hostile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Survey respondents also accused department leaders of stalling investigations, micromanaging, and, in some cases, ignoring relevant evidence to suit biased conclusions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DPA was established in 1982 as the Office of Citizen Complaints. The agency has 36 employees, and its budget this year is $8.9 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former employee of the Department of Police Accountability is suing the agency, accusing its chief of misappropriating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[4752,4734,15636,101,103,102,104,106,105,4736],"class_list":["post-227516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-city-hall","tag-department-of-police-accountability","tag-police-reform","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sfpd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227516","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=227516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}