California Mayor Says She Was Denied Active Shooter Security Door Provided To White Colleague, Files Discrimination Lawsuit
A Black female mayor California has initiated legal action against her city with two separate lawsuits for discrimination.
The lawsuits are suing for racial and gender discrimination, invasion of privacy, and mishandling of her retirement savings.
Mayor Deborah Robertson of Rialto, California, has initiated legal action after her claims were dismissed by the city. One of these claims pertains to the city's handling of the aftermath of the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, which resulted in the loss of 14 lives and left almost two dozen others wounded.
After the shooting, the city engaged a security consultant to evaluate the risks at City Hall. Robertson, 73, contends that the city manager and members of the city council discriminated against her by failing to furnish her office with a specialized security door designed for active shooter scenarios, despite providing one to her opponent.
Despite the security consultant's assessment which did not advocate for the installation of security doors, city officials proceeded to order a door for Councilman Raphael Trujillo's office, which was subsequently installed in November 2020. It wasn't until five months later that a door was installed on Mayor Robertson's office.
In a claim filed by Robertson last year, she asserted that following the assessment, "The City immediately installed a security door in one of my Caucasian male colleague's office." This action was reportedly taken without addressing her own expressed safety concerns.
Acting City Manager Arron Brown clarified to the San Bernardino Sun that Councilman Trujillo is of Latino descent, not Caucasian as asserted, and emphasized that the installation of security doors occurred years after the initial security assessment.
In a separate claim filed by Robertson in March 2023, she accused the city police department of conducting searches on her name in their database on multiple occasions without any legitimate law enforcement justification. These searches allegedly occurred at undisclosed times within the premises of both the police and fire departments, a confidential informant claimed.
Robertson revealed that in 2022, she received an email from the Rialto police chief confirming that her name had been subjected to 10 separate searches within the police database.
In a previous incident in 2021, the city settled a case with Councilman Ed Scott for $500,000 after he asserted that his sons' names had been searched multiple times in the police database over a two-day span in 2016. Scott believed that the searches were conducted with the intent to unearth negative information about him and his family to undermine his re-election campaign.
"She's so embroiled in all these lawsuits, she's lost sight of the direction of the city," Trujillo shared with the Daily Mail. "You start to question what her intentions are: being a steward of our taxpayer dollars? Or is it to have personal gains from the taxpayers?"
Rialto is situated within San Bernardino County. The city, which boasts a population of just over 104,000 according to the 2020 US Census, is located 56 miles east of Los Angeles.
