The city of San Leandro has agreed to pay $314,000 to a fired African American police officer who said he was the victim of racial discrimination and the unfair target of another lawsuit filed by several female former officers.
DeWayne Stancill was demoted from his position as a sergeant and then terminated from the San Leandro Police Department last year after he complained about racial discrimination and harassment in the force, according to his attorney, Hunter Pyle.
City and police officials have declined comment.
Stancill joined the department in 1998 and became a sergeant in 2007, after which he began experiencing harassment, with colleagues denigrating him as "ghetto" and stupid, he said in court papers.
A group of white officers "could not accept the fact that a black man had been promoted before them," Pyle said Wednesday. "They went to extreme lengths to take him down."
In 2009, three female officers and a records clerk filed federal lawsuits saying they were treated differently from male co-workers and subjected to "unwelcome and harassing" comments by Stancill.
The city paid $405,000 to the women to settle their lawsuits. In doing so, attorneys for the city and women released a statement saying, "The parties emphasize there were unfortunate misunderstandings that may have led to ill-considered allegations that they now regret, and for which they apologize." The officers are now employed by the Oakland Police Department.
The department began investigating Stancill's conduct in two incidents and demoted him to officer before firing him, Pyle said.
Stancill said he had endured hardships before becoming a police officer. He was raised in Oakland in "dire financial straits," was homeless for a time and, in 1984, an Oakland police officer shot and killed his father. Last year, Stancill's son, Dwayne Stancill, was convicted of second-degree murder for fatally shooting a San Leandro High School student in Oakland.
Pyle said, "I feel strongly that the biggest losers in all of this are the citizens of San Leandro. They lost a great cop and had to pay a bunch of money to settle his lawsuit."
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