LA County seeks mental exam in discrimination lawsuit

Blanca Arevalo, right, with Sheriff Robert Luna. (LASD photo)

Los Angeles County is asking a judge to permit an independent mental examination of an Aero Bureau captain who alleges in a lawsuit that she has been subjected to racial and sex discrimination.

Blanca Arevalo, a Latina, alleges in her Los Angeles Superior Court race/gender discrimination suit that two white male supervisors isolated her from the workplace and held meetings with a white bureau lieutenant without her knowledge.

"Plaintiff's mental health condition is undisputedly at issue in this case and good cause exists for the (psychological evaluation) due to her claims of severe emotional distress and her sworn testimony regarding alternative personal stressors," the county's attorneys contend in court papers filed on Tuesday with Judge Doreen B. Boxer in advance of a July 31 hearing.

The county attorneys want the examination conducted on Aug. 18 at the office of Woodland Hills psychologist Michelle Conover. The evaluation will take four to six hours, not including breaks, and there will be no physical examination, according to the county lawyers' pleadings.

The motion is necessary because an initial attempt to schedule an appointment with Arevalo, followed by six subsequent attempts, were to no avail, according to the county attorneys' court papers.

According to Arevalo's lawsuit, she was hired in 1999 and previously worked in the Twin Towers jail while also holding such jobs as providing security in three county courthouses and as a watch commander at the Norwalk station. Cerritos residents commended her for her show of restraint during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd, the suit states.

Arevalo also served as an aide to an assistant sheriff and was promoted to captain in May 2022, the suit states. Arevalo is the commanding officer of the Aero Bureau and is charged with the unit's fiscal management, personnel administration, operational efficiency and risk management.

However, upon Arevalo's arrival to the Aero Bureau, the Special Operations Division's chief and the plaintiff's supervising commander, both white, "quickly established" that Arevalo, a Latina, was "captain of the Aero Bureau in name only," telling her she was not to make any fiscal, resource or personnel allocation changes without their approval, the suit states. The commander reports to the chief and both are co-defendants in the suit.

Arevalo also was excluded from involvement in efforts to acquire new helicopters, although white males were allowed to attend such discussions, the suit states. The pair also assigned a white male lieutenant to the Aero Bureau even though the unit already had one lieutenant and that was all that was required by staffing, according to the suit, which further states the commander told her to "deal with it" and that the second lieutenant was a "gift" to her.

When Arevalo expressed concerns about the second lieutenant's hiring to the commander, he made an implied threat to her by saying that was "how people get moved," the suit alleges.

Over several months, the commander "isolated plaintiff, refused to speak with her, circumvented plaintiff's authority" and directly issued orders to the second lieutenant and had him attend secret Aero Bureau meetings, the suit states.

Through their alleged inaction, the LASD hierarchy "permitted and condoned the rampant racism and sexism" Arevalo contends she suffered and the chief and commander, who were not disciplined, have only felt more emboldened, according to the suit brought Jan. 29.

The second lieutenant went on military leave in August 2023, the suit states.