‘I felt beaten down’: Federal jury hears arguments in Bellevue police retaliation lawsuit

A federal jury heard arguments Wednesday in the case of a female Bellevue police officer who claims she was retaliated against after reporting sexual harassment she suffered while on the job.

Officer Jan M. Trizuto (formerly Jan M. Auclair) is suing both the City of Bellevue and her former supervisor, Lt. Daniel Young, for unlawful retaliation after she claimed that her field training supervisor shared stories of sexual conquest with her and sent her inappropriate text messages.

After the alleged sexual misconduct was reported in May 2010, Officer Trizuto claims Lt. Young, who was a close friend of the field training supervisor, began subjecting her to “negative treatment, which included public ridicule and public threats of discipline,” according to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court.

Lieutenant Young was Officer Trizuto’s direct supervisor at the time of the alleged conduct, according to the complaint.

“He would belittle me, yell at me,” Officer Trizuto told an eight-member jury Wednesday at the federal courthouse in Seattle.

The jury is made up of three women and five men.

“I lost my confidence as an officer and it took me a while to get it back,” she said.

Officer Trizuto told jurors that she suffered stress, headaches, and insomnia as a result of Lt. Young’s alleged treatment.

Lieutenant Young was present in court Wednesday, dressed in his Bellevue Police Department uniform.

An attorney for Lt. Young argued at length that Officer Trizuto had a spotted record with the department, including several incidents that called her judgment and performance into question.

During one such incident, Officer Trizuto called a suspect a “prick” and performed an unlawful search of his vehicle after he was arrested for driving with a suspended license, according to an internal investigative document entered into evidence.

When Lt. Young became Officer Trizuto’s supervisor, he told her that her performance was below standard and created an accountability plan that she was required to follow for six months.

“I want you to realize that you are not above the law because you are a police officer,” Lt. Young wrote in an internal memo to Officer Trizuto in January 2010, three months before the sexual harassment claims came to light.

In the memo, Lt. Young warned Officer Trizuto that she had a habit of blaming other officers for her mistakes, which hurt the department as a whole.

An attorney for Lt. Young argued that the memo is evidence his client was critical of Officer Trizuto’s competence as an officer long before she claimed he retaliated against her.

In contrast, attorneys for Officer Trizuto presented several glowing reviews of their client’s job performance. The reviews, which were dated from Dec. 29, 2011, to Jan. 5, 2013, ranked her performance as “exceeds standards.”

“Accomplishes more than is required to perform satisfactory, gives extra effort to the work,” read each of the reviews, which were all completed by supervisors other than Lt. Young.

While on the stand Wednesday, Officer Trizuto stated that she has had seven different supervisors and Lt. Young is the only one who ever called her off the street to do paperwork or yelled at her in front of other officers.

“No matter what I did or said or (how I) acted I was always wrong,” Officer Trizuto told the jury. “I could not please him.”

She said Lt. Young’s expectations became “unreasonable” after the sexual harassment was reported.

A verdict in the trial is expected Monday.