By Brian Rokos
The Press-Enterprise
RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif. — A jury awarded a former Riverside County sheriff’s sergeant $2.25 million on Tuesday, April 21, after finding that the Sheriff’s Department retaliated for his reporting of workplace harassment in 2022 by threatening to launch an investigation against him and forcing him to sign a resignation letter in a fast-food parking lot.
The county was ordered to pay Frank Lodes $1.25 million for past emotional distress and $1 million for future emotional distress, according to his attorney, Bijan Darvish, who filed the lawsuit in 2023.
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Jurors at the Riverside County Historic Courthouse deliberated for a little less than two days.
“The jury’s verdict reflects the devastating toll that retaliation takes on the lives of employees who do nothing more than report what the law requires them to report,” Darvish said.
Darvish said he spoke with two jurors afterward.
“What really stood out for them was the fact that the allegations against him started within days of his claims of harassment and that the department was saying that they started much earlier, but there is no documentation of them having started much earlier,” the attorney said.
Additionally, Darvish said, jurors were troubled by the circumstances of Lodes’ attempt to retire early, and then, his resignation.
First, after Lodes had complained about harassment, internal affairs Sgt. Mike Hamilton spent about four hours at a restaurant attempting to persuade Lodes to retire at about age 47 or else a probe for allegedly violating department policies would begin. Lodes, feeling that he had no choice because the workplace environment was intolerable, wrote out his retirement letter on the hood of his car, the lawsuit says.
The next day, Assistant Sheriff Matthew Jimenez met Lodes in the parking lot of a Del Taco, where he successfully pressured Lodes to instead resign — and withdraw his harassment complaint, the lawsuit says. Lodes briefly left Jimenez’s car to change the IV of his ailing wife, who was seated in his car, and then returned to sign the pre-written resignation letter, the lawsuit says.
“That’s not where we have employees sign life-changing forms,” Darvish said.
Only the county was named as a defendant. Sheriff Chad Bianco was not mentioned in the lawsuit.
The county’s attorneys, in the response they filed with the court to the lawsuit, said Lodes’ superiors did not retaliate, that internal affairs had already planned to investigate Lodes and that his performance was poor. The attorneys also said Lodes failed to follow internal procedures for filing a complaint.
But the department quickly dropped its planned probe of Lodes and never investigated his harassment complaint after he resigned, Darvish said.
Lodes was assigned to the Jurupa Valley station in 202. As the senior sergeant there, he was responsible for training new sergeants, the lawsuit says. That March, Lodes was in a discussion about promotions along with other station deputies when Lodes’ name was mentioned.
“Don’t worry about Frank,” the station’s commander, Capt. Mike Koehler said, according to the lawsuit. “He’s mentally ill.”
Lodes complained to Koehler, but the captain, instead of apologizing, told Lodes that being mentally ill was not something to feel bad about, the lawsuit says. That same day, Lodes reported Koehler’s comments. The next January, Lodes was removed from his training assignment.
About the same time, someone posted flyers around the station, including in Lodes’ uniform pants pockets, at his workstation and inside his holster, that pictured a child sitting in a patrol car with an image of Lodes’ face placed over hers.
Lodes requested a transfer that was denied, the lawsuit says. He then reported the fliers and Koehler’s comments to a lieutenant.
Soon after, Hamilton drove to Lodes’ home, delivered his personal property from the station and told Lodes about the investigation into him.
“Lodes had not committed any type of misconduct that would subject him to termination, demotion or suspension,” the lawsuit says.
The county, in its court filing, did not confirm or deny the actions of those identified in the lawsuit. But the attorneys said that if they did happen, the actions were outside the scope of the deputies’ authority and therefore the county did not know, or should not be expected to have known, about them.
Koehler was promoted to chief deputy in 2024 and leads operations in the Corrections Division. Jimenez retired in 2023 and received a proclamation from the Board of Supervisors.
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