The Long Beach City Council voted last week to request that the city manager’s office review its policy covering sexual harassment as well as examine the complaints of harassment in the municipal workplace over the last five years. While the councilmembers voted 7 to 0 in favor of the request, it opened up some wounds both old and fresh.
During the Dec. 12 council meeting, 8th District Councilmember Al Austin requested a review of the policy in light of the numerous “high profile” cases involving allegations of sexual harassment. These allegations extinguished the careers of many giants in the entertainment, media and political spheres.
“Please understand,” Austin said, “the intent of this item is to discuss and reaffirm our City’s policy on unlawful harassment and sexual harassment to make sure that we’re sending a clear message as a council that such misbehavior will not be tolerated in any workspace in this city.”
Second District Councilmember Jeannine Pearce supported the request and that night described to the council how she would hope that the human-resource (HR) policy could be improved. She noted that harassment doesn’t just involve the sexual kind. Pearce described how harassment could also involve bullying and threatening behavior.
“And we need to have an HR policy that understands that violence,” she said, “and understands the trauma that people experience— men or women— when they go through violence at home— as children, as adults— and how that trauma can be retriggered in the workplace.”
The 2nd-district councilmember espoused a “trauma-informed” HR policy, noting that there are spaces that should be safe that just do not feel that way.
“There are processes that are supposed to support victims that do not support victims,” Pearce concluded, “and while we say as a whole that we want that culture to be there, unless we’re talking about it and doing it every single day, it falls through the cracks. And if I’ve felt that way, then our lowest-paid staff person at City Hall— I can’t imagine how they feel if something happens, whether it’s an off-handed comment.”
While Austin’s recommendation could have been routine in any other context, the members sitting on the council dais know that the topic hits home. Over the last year, Pearce herself has been embroiled in a dispute with her former chief of staff, Devin Cotter. Through her former attorney, Pearce stated earlier this summer that she has been the victim of stalking and harassment, though at the time she declined to explicitly name Cotter as a perpetrator.
As the Signal Tribune has reported, last June, officers from the California Highway Patrol and the Long Beach Police Department discovered Cotter and Pearce in a car parked off a median on the 710 Freeway. They were involved in a heated fight. Cotter’s attorney stated that his client sustained injuries of his own and that he was not the perpetrator.
The incident spurred a committee to organize and launch a campaign to recall the 2nd-district councilmember from office. Citing several allegations of impropriety, that recall committee accused Pearce of sexually harassing Cotter sometime last year and committing domestic violence against her former chief of staff back in June.
Several media outlets reported that the DA’s office declined to prosecute Pearce on charges of domestic violence, but the DA’s Public Integrity Office had been looking into concerns surrounding other inappropriate activities or conflicts of interest.
No one specifically mentioned those allegations against Pearce during the sexual-harassment discussion.
Many individuals from the community had another axe to grind. Back in September, the council declined to vote in favor of an ordinance that protected hotel workers from overwork and sexual harassment.
Fifth District Councilmember Stacy Mungo defended her decision on the ordinance from September, noting that she had proposed several changes to the policy and explaining how she wanted to protect hotel workers.
For Mungo, the problems of harassment and assault dredge up her own bad memories that hit too close to home. She said that in downtown Long Beach, her own mother was assaulted at work. She had a panic button, the 5th-district councilmember said, adding that no one came to help her mother for 45 minutes.
Mungo herself has noted that she also has had her own experience. She said she took self-defense courses after she was assaulted as a county employee in her workplace. The 5th-district councilmember added that she has worked with hotel management to provide for their staff the same classes.
“And so, when I write a policy,” Mungo said, her voice cracking, “I’m going to write one that’s actually going to make a difference.”
