Alphonso Lee and his management of the Metropolitan Police Department’s equal employment opportunity office are the targets of another lawsuit filed by women in the department who allege they were sexually harassed by superior officers.
Last week, three women—two officers and one civilian employee—joined more than 20 other current and former MPD employees who have taken their claims of harassment, retaliation, and discrimination into court over the past two years. Officer Diana Walker, Officer Brandy Smith, and Karen Ervin filed their case in U.S. District Court for D.C. on Dec. 11, and allege that a long-standing “old boys club” culture at MPD protects men who abuse and harass their coworkers.
“This culture of retaliation and bullying of women at MPD was fostered and enabled by the head of the MPD’s EEO Department, Alphonso Lee … who is, himself, profoundly misogynistic and has a particular disdain for Black women,” the lawsuit claims.
Lee is the former director of MPD’s EEO office, and a main focus of two sweeping sexual harassment and race and gender discrimination lawsuits filed in 2021 by several Black women currently and formerly in the department. Although he is not named as a defendant, some of Lee’s former employees in the EEO office have signed affidavits supporting the women’s claims, and have themselves filed suit against Lee.
Together, the four lawsuits generally accuse Lee of improperly interfering with EEO investigations and setting policies to ensure that such harassment and discrimination complaints are not substantiated.
One of Lee’s former EEO investigators swears in an affidavit that Lee “repeatedly expressed to me that women police officers are liars, conniving, deceptive and will do whatever to get what they want. Mr. Lee is vocal and blatant in his disregard of women.”
Lee’s EEO office was also called out in a cultural assessment of MPD commissioned by former Chief Robert Contee and released in March. The assessment criticized the EEO office for shoddy and incomplete record keeping and case tracking, and recommended that the department conduct an independent audit of the entire office. Lee was removed as EEO director shortly after the assessment was released.
“Given the multiple lawsuits pending against the MPD and its EEO Director, and the inconsistencies in data reported from year to year, an in-depth audit is urgently needed to protect the integrity of the investigative process, manage the department’s risk exposure, remedy any wrongdoing that may be uncovered, and recommend policies and procedures to protect the rights of all employees,” the assessment says.
Lee is not named as a defendant in the case filed last week, but attorney Pam Keith says she intentionally drafted the complaint to focus on his tenure as head of the EEO office and his role in allowing the alleged harassment to continue.
“This is what happens when you have an EEO leader who devalues Black women,” says Keith, who is representing many of the other women at MPD who’ve come forward with similar accusations of harassment and retaliation. “You have serial predatory sexual harassment, and at the same time you have the mayor out there telling everybody why it’s important to recruit women into policing. Really? Do you care what happens to them when they get here?”
As a matter of policy, MPD does not comment on pending litigation, and department spokesperson Paris Lewbel declined City Paper’s request. Lee also declined to comment, citing the active litigation.
Here are the four men accused of sexual harassment in the latest lawsuit:
Lt. Andre Suber
All three plaintiffs say they’ve been harassed by Lt. Andre Suber. The details of his alleged abuse reveal a strikingly similar pattern. Each woman describes to City Paper how Suber would talk to them about his frustrations with his marital sex life and how his wife does not satisfy him. The complaint says that multiple women have accused Suber of sexual harassment, but he has faced little to no discipline.
“He would even mention in roll call that a lot of people complained on him in the past,” Smith says. “And he told me if I started complaining about him, he would make my career a living hell, and that I could ask anybody about him.”
According to the complaint, Ervin, a civilian employee who has worked for MPD since 1998, initially started working with Suber in 2020, when he would show up at the First District station where she worked “during times when he was not expected to be there,” the lawsuit says. Suber “began to show an unusual and excessive interest” in Ervin, asking about her personal life, commenting on her physical appearance, and remarking “how much it pleased him,” the complaint says.
Suber specifically talked about how he was remaining with his wife only for the benefit of his children and that the couple does not share a bedroom, according to the lawsuit.
“By the tone of his voice, facial expression, and body language… Ervin could tell that Lt. Suber was attempting to make an overture to her, changing his inflection from professional conversation, to one of intimate conversation,” the lawsuit says, adding that Ervin changed the conversation when Suber tried to elaborate on his sex life.
In February of 2022, after Ervin returned to work from an illness, she says she noticed a change in Suber’s behavior and attitude toward her. She believes the shift was retaliation for her rejection of his advances, and says he started tracking her whereabouts, menacing her by showing up where she was working, and over scrutinizing her work, the lawsuit says.
Ervin filed an EEO complaint in September 2022, noting the nearly two-year delay in filing the complaint was due to extended absences from work for both she and Suber. He was briefly removed as Ervin’s supervisor while an investigation was underway, according to the lawsuit. But in November 2022, the EEO office dismissed the complaint as untimely. Suber was reinstalled in a position supervising Ervin following the dismissal, and then “escalated his stalking behavior,” the lawsuit claims.
Ervin recalls one instance in particular, in early January of this year. Ervin says she was eating lunch in her car in the employee parking lot when Suber pulled up behind her in his cruiser, blocking her in. He shined his spotlight into her car, which she interpreted as an intimidation tactic. The incident was so concerning that she says she took sick leave and began attending therapy.
Ervin says she wrote letters to Bowser and Contee, who promised to forward her accusations to MPD’s internal affairs division for possible investigation, according to the lawsuit, but no inquiry was ever opened.
Officer Smith, who participated in MPD’s cadet program in 2019, and was assigned to the First District in 2021.
In an interview, Smith recalls a conversation in Suber’s office in 2023 when he initially tried to console her while she dealt with a personal issue. But eventually, Smith says, Suber started talking about being unhappy with his wife and that he wanted to take Smith out. He also told Smith that her lips were “sexy” and asked if he could kiss her, she says.
On another occasion, Smith says, Suber lured her into a conference room under the guise of helping him with a work-related task. “We ended up in a conference room, and he asked me to lean over on this desk to try to have sex,” she says, adding that she declined his advances.
The lawsuit says Suber would call Smith “at all hours of the day, and began calling her when she was at home, off duty, and on her personal phone.” When Smith made it clear that she was not interested in his advances, the lawsuit says he began to retaliate against her—writing her up for minor violations, denying her leave requests, and assigning her to “undesirable tasks.”
Smith says that the retaliation and hostile work environment had detrimental effects on her physical and mental health to the point that she was put on limited duty status. Smith eventually filed an EEO complaint against Suber—after Lee had been removed from the office. The complaint was sustained and concluded that “Suber ordered subordinates to write up statements to incriminate … Smith or to substantiate his fabricated allegations against her,” according to the lawsuit.
The allegations against Suber are not limited to the most recent lawsuit. Keith is the co-counsel in another case where Sgt. Tamika Hampton has described similar treatment.
In the lawsuit filed in September 2021, Hampton alleges that Suber asked her on a date on her third day working in the Seventh District in 2003. Hampton did not want to upset a superior officer, so she told him she was engaged.
“Sgt. Suber indicated that he did not care if … Hampton was engaged, he wanted to date her anyway,” Hampton’s lawsuit says. “He further told … Hampton that he could make her life miserable.”
Hampton filed a complaint with the EEO office, which was unsubstantiated due to insufficient evidence, according to the lawsuit. But a separate complaint with D.C.’s human rights office was resolved through mediation, and in the end determined that “Suber would no longer be able to supervise Officer Hampton for the remainder of her MPD career, but Sgt. Suber was not disciplined in any other way,” Hampton’s lawsuit says.
Commander Ralph Ennis
Officer Walker joined MPD in June 2018 as a cadet and entered the police academy while Commander Ralph Ennis was in charge. Walker says in the lawsuit that Ennis DM’d her and another young officer, who is not a named plaintiff, on Instagram a few weeks after they graduated from the academy.
“He was like, ‘Oh you’re beautiful, you’re sexy, and if you ever need any favor let me know because me and Commander Kane are cool,’” Walker says in an interview, referring to Assistant Chief Morgan Kane, who at the time was a commander in charge of the district where Walker was assigned.
Walker was about 22 years old at the time. She says she never officially reported Ennis’ alleged behavior because she was still in a probationary period and feared retaliation.
“I didn’t know who I could trust, so I always kept it to myself,” Walker says. “Since I got out of the academy, it’s been overwhelming and stressful. I would cry on my way to work. I was ready to resign. It was to the point where I was willing to lose everything I worked so hard for because I didn’t want to deal with it.”
Ennis retired in March 2023.
Sgt. Tracy Kennie
In the lawsuit, Walker says Sgt. Tracy Kennie (spelled “Tracie Kenny” in the complaint) repeatedly propositioned her and on several occasions followed her to her car and asked her out on dates. Kennie’s alleged harassment became so persistent, according to the lawsuit, that Walker asked other coworkers to walk with her to her vehicle in order to avoid one-on-one interactions with him.
“When I would hear his voice in the hallway, I would go to the locker room,” Walker tells City Paper. “He would say things like, ‘Oh, you changed your number. You didn’t give it to me.’ And, ‘I like short women. When are you going to let me take you out?’ He would get me alone and say stuff like that. It was making me feel uncomfortable because, you know, I’m not interested.”
Walker did not report Kennie’s alleged behavior, according to her lawsuit, because she feared retaliation and did not believe the department would do anything to fix it.
Kennie is one of 36 officers identified in an October 2022 report from the D.C. Auditor who the department fired for misconduct, but was forced to rehire after an appeals process.
The auditor’s report says Kennie was fired in July 2010 after he falsified an incident report about a minor vehicle collision. According to the auditor, Kennie rear-ended a civilian in February 2009, and then prepared an incident report for himself and signed off on it on behalf of his supervisor, who had not reviewed the report. An arbitrator reversed MPD’s termination in April 2013, and the decision was upheld in court in December 2015. Kennie’s termination was reduced to a 30-day suspension, and he received $550,651 in back pay, according to the auditor. Since his reinstatement, Kennie has been the subject of six complaints to the Office of Police Complaints in addition to 10 instances of misconduct. In one case, he discharged a Taser at the MPD gym, and in another, he pulled the chair out from under a sergeant who was about to sit down.
Lt. Yusuf Edwards
Walker says in the lawsuit that she returned from maternity leave in January 2023 and was assigned to the First District, where Lt. Yusuf Edwards became her direct supervisor. She tells City Paper that she built a good working relationship with Edwards and felt she could go to him when she needed help on the job.
But eventually Edwards started making sexually explicit comments to her, she says. Walker recalls one instance where he asked her to accompany him upstairs to his office in order to fix a mistake on her overtime paperwork.
“We get on the elevator, and I asked what I messed up, and he was like, ‘Oh, you didn’t mess up on anything. I just wanted you to come upstairs with me,’” she says. “He would ask me, ‘You like head at work? Because I like head at work.’”
Walker says in the lawsuit that Edwards has asked her to sit on his lap and asked if he could touch her buttocks. He also allegedly said that he wanted to pin her up against the wall. And in May of this year, according to the lawsuit, Edwards called Walker while he was off duty and she was out working in the community. “He ordered her to come back to the station so she could give him a hug,” the suit says, which she refused.
“I asked him, ‘How many women have you done stuff with on the department?’ He said, ‘A lot, but they just don’t say anything,’” Walker says.
“I can’t trust anybody, and I don’t know who to turn to,” she adds. “And that’s stressful going to work, not knowing who you can turn to.”
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Lee, for his part, was removed as MPD’s EEO director shortly after the culture assessment was released in March. He is currently a senior adviser in MPD’s general counsel’s office, according to his email signature, making more than $130,000.
The culture assessment says the EEO office “has lacked scrutiny for the past several years, which calls into question how seriously the department takes its ‘commit[ment] to providing a workplace free of demeaning, derogatory, or abusive language, actions, and/or gestures relating to a person’s race, color, national origin, sex/gender, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, language harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.”
The assessment also echoes Smith and Walker’s sentiments about low officer morale stemming from poor leadership.
The assessment quotes one officer saying:
“As far as our command, it is both disheartening and disgraceful that so many of them have serious misconduct issues and yet they are rarely reprimanded. Command members frequently have inappropriate relationships with subordinates causing infidelity scandals and domestic dramas that are unbecoming [to] representatives of our department.”
City Paper has previously reported on Assistant Chief Andre Wright’s ascension to the highest ranks of the department despite allegations that he has had affairs with two subordinate officers and drank on the job.
Keith, who represents many of the women who have come forward with these accusations, is flabbergasted that Lee still has a job.
“Given that Black women have been fired for so much less, you have to ask why Alphonso Lee is still employed with MPD,” she says. “On top of being a misogynistic jerk, he’s actually a really bad manager. Why are the taxpayers still funding this guy? It offends me as a D.C. taxpayer that my taxes are funding his salary.”