By Dana DiFilippo
Philadelphia Daily News
PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania State Trooper Andrea Young just wanted a promotion.
So the 13-year veteran - her smarts already proved as a Mensa member - took the Pennsylvania State Police’s promotions exam, scoring sixth out of 2,000 test-takers.
But, despite her scores and an unblemished disciplinary record, her bosses passed her over for promotion. Male co-workers joked about her sex life. Colleagues accused her of cheating on the exam. Superiors suspended her, stripped her of her badge and gun, transferred her and tried to fire her.
One trooper even sent her a photo of his penis.
Those are the allegations in a federal civil-rights lawsuit that Young filed recently against the state police and 13 superiors and colleagues, in which she claims that she suffered gender discrimination, defamation, whistle-blower retaliation and a hostile work environment.
The case comes five months after the state police troopers’ union asked federal and state authorities to investigate corruption among the 4,576-trooper force’s bigwigs. The union also filed a federal lawsuit in September charging supervisors with abusing the discipline system and retaliating against whistle-blowers in the department.
Young’s Oct. 31 lawsuit was one of at least two filed in just one week.
Civilian Jerry Grossnickle, of Lycoming County, filed a federal suit Nov. 3 against three troopers, accusing one - the jealous ex-boyfriend of Grossnickle’s new wife - of running an unlawful background check on him in 2007. The two other troopers named in the lawsuit covered up the trooper’s improper snooping, charged Grossnickle, who is seeking punitive damages for emotional distress.
“There’s a buddy system that pervades the state police, a system in which criminal laws are broken to protect the clique,” said Don Bailey, Grossnickle’s attorney.
In Young’s case, attorney Lisa Matukaitis contends that a coverup was behind much of Young’s mistreatment.
Before she sought promotion, Young was such a valued trooper that she worked as an undercover narcotics investigator who infiltrated a Pagans biker rally, performed wiretaps and otherwise ferreted out and fought illegal drug activity, Matukaitis said.
Young, a single mother of two who worked in the department’s Bureau of Research and Development in Harrisburg, sat for the promotions exam last year, eager to advance her career and get more steady hours to accommodate her family, according to the lawsuit.
But male co-workers who also were seeking promotion accused her of cheating, even as they admitted that they had cheated, according to the lawsuit. One of those troopers, Chad Berstler, whom she formerly had dated, filed a harassment complaint against her, even though he had sent her a photo of his penis, according to the lawsuit.
Her bosses placed her on restricted duty, involuntarily transferred her to Hazleton, denied her promotion, suspended her without pay and then court-martialed her, according to the lawsuit.
Matukaitis contends that Young’s tormentors had many motivations to conspire to lie to discredit Young:
Some allegedly wanted the promotion for themselves, were buddies with the bosses and were seeking to deflect attention from their own misbehavior. One worried that Young would rat him out for having an outside vendor foot the bill for a supervisor’s retirement party, according to the lawsuit. Others said that promoting Young within the Bureau of Research and Development would be “disruptive,” because that’s where Berstler, also named in the lawsuit, works, according to the suit.
Young filed complaints with the union and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. An arbitrator found no proof of cheating or harassment, ordered her reinstated with back pay and benefits, and recommended reconsideration for promotion, according to the lawsuit.
But Young remains exiled to Hazleton and wasn’t promoted, according to the lawsuit, which seeks compensatory and punitive damages and fines against the defendants for their alleged offenses.
“Trooper Young is exactly the kind of trooper that the Pennsylvania State Police should have among their ranks,” Matukaitis said. “She is a smart woman, she’s hardworking and she’s ethical. She has spent the last 18 months of her life trying to clear her name. She has not one issue on her record. She earned a promotion.”
Jack Lewis, a state police spokesman, said he could not comment on pending litigation. But he said the force strives for a diverse workplace.
Although less than 4 percent of state troopers are women, recruitment efforts are prompting more women to pursue employment with the state police, Lewis said. Of more than 10,400 people who took the exam to become a state police cadet since 2007, more than 12 percent were female, Lewis added.
Copyright 2009 Philadelphia Daily News