Seattle police lieutenant hit with retaliation after enforcing accountability (2024)

SEATTLE - A high-ranking Seattle police officer — who has been the subject of more than a dozen complaints, and was targeted in a $5 million tort claim — appears to be a victim of workplace retaliation, according to a FOX 13 Seattle review of hundreds of pages of internal Seattle Police Department (SPD) and city documents.

Lt. John O’Neil, a 20-year veteran of SPD, has been cleared in multiple investigations since 2023. The complaints alleged sexual harassment, racism and gender discrimination. However, documents obtained by FOX 13 Seattle reveal many of the allegations to be unfounded, and internal investigators concluded that the "facts" did not back up the accusations.

Yet, many of those same accusations are used in a tort complaint against the city of Seattle and Seattle police by four female police officers seeking millions in taxpayer dollars.

The tort claim filed in April sought damages for sexual harassment, hostile work environment and gender discrimination, and is now a lawsuit. The final decision could come down to a civil jury.

The four female officers named in the lawsuit are Kame Spencer, Valerie Carson, Judinna Gulpan and Lt. Lauren Truscott. Spencer has the longest history of complaints against O’Neil.

In recent years, O’Neil has pleaded for intervention against what he argues is retaliation for holding officers accountable for offenses like insubordination, work performance and bad behavior. His pleas for help within the system have gone nowhere. Media coverage of the formal complaints and tort claim against him damaged his reputation, because he was described as a groomer, predator and sexual harasser.

The female officers' persistent accusations held such heavy weight that they contributed to Mayor Harrell’sdecision to replace Chief Adrian Diaz in May. At the time, Harrell called the legal issues a "distraction."

Lt. O’Neil accused of racism for taking down pictures of white K-9 officers

Officer Kame Spencer accused O’Neil of "discrimination and harassment," in part because he removed a series of photos all showingwhite officers from his office. Spencer and O’Neil are Black.

Spencer, who has been with SPD since 2017, filed the complaint withthe Seattle Police Department’s EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity Office) in 2022 when she was a trainee in the K-9 unit and O’Neil was her supervisor.Spencer claimed O’Neil got angry and assigned her to research the accomplishments of the white K-9 officers when she questioned why O’Neil took the pictures down.

Spencer was interviewed by SPD HR Manager Rebecca McKechnie and in that interview Spencer said:

"He’s[O’Neil] like, 'Well, I just wanted to know why you’re so vested in these photos?' I said, 'Well, because it’s part of history, like I felt like you taking them down is the same as what we’ve dealt with the protests, and everything where they are taking down all these statues because they believe they are slave drivers or whatever. Even if you don’t agree with it, it’s history …'"

Spencer also accused O’Neil of repeatedly saying she was only brought to the K-9 unit as a diversity hire because she was Black, and that others didn’t want her there.

In response to those complaints, O’Neil filed his own complaint with the Office of Police Accountability (OPA), calling all the accusations "flat out not true."

O’Neil argued there was no racial motivationbehind his decision to remove the photos, and he had not given Spencer any research assignment. Instead, O’Neil said he took down the pictures after a sergeant he shared the office with retired, and the office became his personal space.

According to documents obtained by FOX 13 Seattle, O’Neil said: "I neatly stacked the pictures in the hallway believing the retired Sgt. would eventually come get them. I redecorated my office with my family pictures, awards and NFL posters."

Weeks after Spencer’s accusations of racism, O’Neil was removed as the supervisor of the K-9 unit, without cause, and reassigned to a desk job overseeing use of force cases.

It would take nearly 17 months for SPD EEO to send a letter to O’Neil clearing him of Spencer’s accusations. The May 2023 letter stated that the discrimination and harassment allegations against him were "not sustained" and the evidence gathered did not support the allegations.

Spencer adds a new complaint against O’Neil as the first complaint closes

As the first case came to a close, Spencer filed a new complaint against O’Neil; this time with the city of Seattle’s Human Resources Investigations Unit (HRIU).

In the complaint, Spencer reiterated racism and harassment, but she added a new claim: sexual harassment.

By this time, O’Neil had not seen Spencer in more than a year. After her first complaint, O'Neil got bounced around to the desk job until he landed in the Public Affairs department.

In the second complaint, Spencer accused O’Neil of sitting close and touching his knee to her knee during multiple private meetings in 2021, while they talked about the K-9 unit.

In an interview with HR investigators, Spencer said: "I would sit in the desk across from him [and] he would purposefully scoot his chair over, like slide up and put his knee on mine … and I would physically shift in my seat to move away from him. Like, very obvious signs that I was uncomfortable, not only being that close to him but him touching me."

After eight months, O’Neil was again cleared of any wrongdoing, and it was confirmed in a letter sent by HRIU investigators with the city of Seattle.

The January 8 letter stated that after interviewing witnesses and reviewing documents, the "facts did not support a finding" that O’Neil had sexually harassed Spencer or inappropriately touched her. They also determined that O’Neil did not treat her differently because she was a woman and did not offer her assistance that was unavailable to male colleagues.

HRIU’s investigators also asked Spencer if she had brought up sexual harassment in the first complaint against O’Neil. Spencer said SPD HR manager RebeccaMcKechnie,who conducted the interview with Spencer, did not give her the opportunity to elaborate and rushed the interview. However, the transcript reveals otherwise. Toward the end of the interview, McKechnie asked Spencer if she had "anything more you want to add," and Spencer responded, "No."

Increased accountability coincides with a rise in complaints. O’Neil seeks help for ‘retaliation’

FOX 13 Seattle looked into O’Neil’s work history and could not find any internal EEO complaints during his first 17 years with SPD. However, records show a sudden escalation of complaints in the last two and half years, all while working under former Seattle police Chief Adrian Diaz.

The first EEO complaint came from Spencer after O’Neil was assigned to supervise the K-9 patrol units in 2021, after an Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit found several systemic concerns with K9 deployments in the unitdue to lack of oversight. O’Neil was brought in to help fix the unit.

In his OPA counter complaint, O’Neil argued that Officer Spencer and Officer Anthony Ducre filed their complaints to retaliate against him for taking away Ducre’s authority to train new K-9 officers, which at the time included Spencer.

O’Neil said he was eventually ordered to pull Ducre from training altogether after Ducre’s K-9 partner, Jedi, was killed in the line of duty.

O’Neil has written to administrators at SPD, the city of Seattle and the OPA defending his 20-year reputation and pleading for intervention against what he calls false complaints. He questioned why the officers were not being held accountable for "dishonesty" and weaponizing the EEO system.

An email from SPD HR manager McKechnie in May informed O’Neil that EEO complaints are "protected activity."

OPA did not investigate O’Neil’s retaliation complaints against Spencer and Ducre. But at least six separate investigations brought against O’Neil have closed so far, none of which found any merit to the allegations of sexual harassment, racism, retaliation and gender discrimination. All six of those closed investigations were started by complaints from the women in the lawsuit and Officer Ducre.

Despite the findings clearing O’Neil, it didn’t stop the lawsuit, not only targeting O’Neil but also going after Diaz and McKechnie.

The plaintiffs accuse McKechnie of siding with O’Neil and "victim shaming." They also accuse Diaz for condoning and promoting O’Neil despite their complaints about O’Neil.

Records also show that the pattern of complaints continuedagainst O’Neilwhen Diaz assigned himto supervise the Public Affairs Department in 2022.

Multiple sources told FOX 13 Seattle that Diaz wanted O’Neil to fix the culture and operations in the SPD Public Affairs Department. Sources say Diaz wanted Public Affairs to be more transparent and accessible to reporters seeking information for the public, but he received instant pushback from almost everyone in the department when he tried to implement those changes. Sources say that led to a massive turnover at the department, and O’Neilfiled insubordination complaints against Officer Valerie Carson and Judinna Gulpan.

Carson and Gulpan are now two of the four women suing the city of Seattle. A civil jury decision on the potential multi-million-dollar lawsuit could be decided in court in 2025.

FOX 13 Seattle reached out to Attorney Sumeer Singla, representing the four female officers, about the findings of retaliation against O’Neil. Singla’s statement said:

"Mayor Bruce Harrell and the Interim Police Chief Sue Rahr promised the public that they will respect and protect female officers who have the courage to raise complaints about sexual harassment and discrimination. It is unfortunate Mayor Harrell and Chief Rahr are allowing their top lieutenant to push cherry-picked information and engage in victim-blaming. A jury – not the media relying on cherry-picked information – will make the ultimate decision about the claims against the City."

After obtaining documents involving O’Neil’s cases, FOX 13 Seattle reached out to him, but he declined an on-camera interview.

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