Campbell policewoman Margaret Leitz ran toward the gunfire at the 2019 Gilroy Garlic Festival mass shooting, rescued a woman who had been shot in the head and helped others escape over a five-foot fence.
For her heroism, Campbell’s police chief Gary Berg awarded Leitz a medal of valor.
But now she’s suing the the City of Campbell, its police department, and Berg over what she alleges was ongoing sex discrimination, and malicious harassment related to an injury she suffered while saving festival-goers in Gilroy.
The city, police department and Berg did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
Leitz, 43, claims in the lawsuit filed Monday in Santa Clara County Superior Court that shortly after her hiring in 2012, her colleagues, nearly all male, were warned in a briefing that she was a “walking sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.”
As a heterosexual female, it was “automatically assumed” in the department that she would have sex with male co-workers despite her being in a monogamous relationship at the time, Leitz said in a July statement of claim against the City of Campbell.
As she rose in rank to become a field-training officer, award-winning hostage negotiator, crime-scene technician, homicide detective, and supervisor, she continued to be treated differently because she was a woman and sexism was “standard practice” in the department, her lawsuit alleged. Supervisors and fellow officers questioned her ability to shoot and willingness to fight combative suspects, and supervisors showed up at incidents solely so they could criticize her tactics, her lawsuit alleged.
“I always knew going into law enforcement that it was a male-dominated profession,” Leitz said in an interview Wednesday. “I knew it was going to be an uphill battle and it was a challenge I was willing to accept.”
Knowing her sex put her at a disadvantage, Leitz worked extra hard to make arrests — more than 800 over 10 years — and advance in her career, she said.
“I was a hard charger,” Leitz said.
In her decade of active duty, Leitz pushed for, and eventually accomplished, changes including bullet-proof vests designed for female officers, and guns that could be adapted to fit female officers who are smaller than men, said Leitz, who stands five-foot-three and weighs 125 pounds.
“I didn’t always want to make waves but I was very vocal about the way women were treated differently,” Leitz said. “The answer from Campbell for everything that was ever bought up is, ‘Hey, this is the way it always has been and this is the way it’s going to be.’”
Department members “repeatedly sexualized” Leitz, she claimed in the lawsuit. In 2014, a newly promoted sergeant took her aside and said he had heard she and her boyfriend broke up. The sergeant “explained it’s common for female officers to have sex with male officers at their own agency, throughout the county, random men they met while on the job, or while away at trainings,” Leitz’s statement said.
The sergeant “made it clear that he didn’t want the City of Campbell to look bad because of my expected promiscuous behavior,” said the statement, filed as an exhibit with the lawsuit.
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When she was promoted to supervisor, a fellow officer told her she only received the advancement because she was female and “checked a box,” the lawsuit alleged.
In July 2019, Leitz was assigned to the Gilroy Garlic Festival as part of a multi-department, mutual-aid police team. She heard gunfire from 50 yards away, as the teen with the assault rifle began the attack that killed three people and wounded 17.
“I was actually the first officer to run into the shooting,” Leitz said.
She saw a woman bleeding heavily from a gunshot to the head, grabbed her, put her by a fence and told her to hold her head together. People were shouting, “Save me, save me,” and she pushed two children over a five-foot fence, then she made a stirrup of her hands to help several large adults follow, Leitz said.
The woman she had helped survived. The gunman, 19, was killed by police. Leitz, at some point in the chaotic rescue, badly re-injured her wrist that had been hurt in a 2013 foot pursuit.
For more than two years, Campbell and its benefits administrator denied her requests for orthopedic care, the lawsuit claimed. “During this time, Leitz was involved in approximately 10 violent altercations with suspects, aggravating the left wrist injury,” the lawsuit said. Thirty-one months after the injury, she finally had surgery, the lawsuit said.
“Tellingly, three male officers were promptly provided surgical treatment after injuries suffered during workouts,” the lawsuit alleged.
After she was “medically retired” because of her injury, the city and department filed a felony fraud complaint against her over her worker’s compensation claims, but the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office declined to lay charges over the “malicious accusations,” the lawsuit claimed.
Meanwhile, as Leitz, unable to work as a police officer because of her wrist, works part-time as a flight attendant, the city and department are blocking her official retirement and the California state benefits that come with it, the lawsuit alleged. Technically still on the department’s payroll, she receives no pay, is borrowing money to cover costs, and, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, wakes up frequently at night with panic attacks, she said.
Leitz’s lawsuit accuses Campbell and its police department of sex discrimination, disability discrimination, harassment and retaliation.
She is seeking unspecified damages, and compensation for purported loss of wages and benefits.
