By SAMUEL MAULL
Associated Press Writer
9:36 PM EDT, September 28, 2007
NEW YORK
A gay police officer has filed a discrimination suit against the city and the New York Police Department, saying he was threatened with violence, called vulgar names and treated unfairly by supervisors because of his sexuality.
The lawsuit was filed by Michael Harrington, 30, who claimed his superior officers failed to take proper action when he told them about the malicious and discriminatory mistreatment he suffered.
"The hell he's gone through is heart wrenching," said Harrington's lawyer, George D. Rosenbaum.
Connie Pankratz, spokeswoman for the city's Law Department, said the city had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment
Harrington, a police officer since July 2002, says in court papers he disclosed to another officer at the 75th Precinct in the East New York section of Brooklyn in February 2003 that he was gay, and that was the beginning of his problems with co-workers.
Harrington, of Brooklyn, said in the suit that within months he overheard an officer in the men's room referring to him as a "faggot." Harrington spoke to the officer who said he would hurt Harrington if he confronted the officer again.
Court papers say Harrington also repeatedly sought a transfer from the 75th Precinct but his written applications "kept getting lost." He was told that after he finally transferred out of the 75th Precinct, that someone posted obscene drawings of him in a sex act, the suit claimed.
While working at the 79th Precinct in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, Harrington brought his domestic partner to the station house Christmas party. Upon introducing his partner, another officer spit out his drink and began laughing.
Harrington says he complained to a supervisor about being mistreated and the supervisor said he was going to transfer him to the Sixth Precinct in Greenwich Village "so plaintiff could be with his people," the suit said.
At the Sixth Precinct, court papers say, a co-worker told Harrington in December 2006 that "all faggots should be shot."
Harrington was repeatedly denied a chance to work day shifts even after he explained to his supervisors that he needed to do so because hoped to adopt a child, according to court papers.
He claimed he was rarely allowed to work in a patrol car with other officers and was almost always assigned the "rookie" job of taking prisoners downtown to central booking, or he was assigned to walk foot posts.
According to the suit, by January 2007, stress, harassment and a hostile work environment had caused Harrington to develop stomach cramps and nausea.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Manhattan's state Supreme Court, asked for unspecified money damages.
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