This is super duper ugly.
Constable Alan Rosen
Untrained deputies picked for “undercover” vice assignments — only to be molested and traumatized by superiors. Prostitution stings devolving into “booze-fueled playgrounds.” And a concerned Precinct 1 Constable Office’s employee, fired after she reported the alleged misconduct to the department’s internal affairs division.
Those are among allegations laid out in a bombshell 40-page civil rights lawsuit filed Monday morning in federal court against Harris County, Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen, and two of his top-ranking superiors.
Three current and former deputy constables — and one other plaintiff — alleged a wide array of misconduct at the constable’s office, one of the largest in Harris County, including sexual harassment, sexual battery, civil rights violations and retaliation. The alleged incidents took place in 2019 and 2020.
At a Monday morning news conference, attorney Cordt Akers discussed the lawsuit, flanked by three of the plaintiffs in the case: Felecia McKinney, Jacquelyn Aluotto and Liz Gomez.
Rosen, he said, ran, oversaw, and approved an “ongoing free for all.”
“Senior male deputies were given carte blanche to use young female deputies for their own sexual pleasure on these operations without fear of repercussions.”
Rosen’s office has not commented on the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, the supervisors of the constable’s office’s human trafficking unit decided to change operations to perform “bachelor party” stings. The plan was simple, according to the lawsuit: deputies set up surveillance in a hotel room, and male and female deputies — all undercover — pretended to be partygoers, with some of the female deputies posing as prostitutes, potentially enticing sex workers to agree to sell sex for cash — and quickly leading to an arrest.
Three current and former female deputy constables alleged they were picked for the undercover unit despite being inexperienced rookies. Gomez “was continuously subjected to sexual harassment, unwarranted touching, unwanted kissing, molestation, and sexual ridicule during her work on the Human Trafficking Unit,” according to the suit.
The suit also states the female deputies were ordered to purchase and wear revealing clothing for these operations — only to be kissed and otherwise molested by one of their superiors, and that deputies drank copious amounts of alcohol during the so-called “bachelor party” stings.
Attorney Brock Akers — Cordt Akers’ father and another lawyer on the case, said that the case was unique in the many decades he has practiced law in Harris County.
“I thought that I’d seen it all. I was wrong,” he said. “(Precinct 1) leadership gave in to their own prurient turning the female deputies they commanded into the sex exploitation victims they were arguably trying to save.”
There’s more, and there’s a copy of the lawsuit embedded in the story. It doesn’t get any better, and at no point is the question “why did anyone think that ‘bachelor party stings’ was ever a good thing to expend law enforcement resources on” answered. I’m basically at a loss for words here. Constable Rosen’s office hasn’t commented yet, and I suppose maybe there’s something they could say in their defense that might mitigate some of this, but offhand I have no idea what that might be. Here’s what I think should happen, assuming there isn’t some clear evidence to suggest these charges aren’t true: Constable Rosen and the two other named defendants should resign, and the Harris County Attorney’s Office should decline to take any legal action in their defense, other than to negotiate a very generous settlement. The rest of us should once again wonder what the office of Constable is good for these days, and why we still have them as separate elected offices with their own organizations, instead of folding them into the Sheriff’s office.
(The irony of this story coming out on the same day that the House passed the anti-police defunding bill is something, that’s for sure.)
UPDATE: The later version of the story contains this from Constable Rosen:
In a lengthy statement issued Monday afternoon, Rosen said he had a zero-tolerance stance against sexual assault and sexual harassment “and would never allow a hostile work environment” as alleged in the lawsuit. The constable also said when his internal investigators began looking into the matter several months ago, he “immediately” transferred leadership of the Human Trafficking unit to another supervisor, who is still overseeing the unit today.
He said the court filing was “an effort to impugn the good reputation” of his department. Rosen explained in the statement that when he learned of concerns “by a third party several months ago,” he instructed internal investigators to probe the matter.
“We did this even though no one made a formal complaint,” he said, in the statement. “To this day, not one of these plaintiffs has ever made a formal complaint. Each employee interviewed was given the opportunity, in a safe environment, to express any concerns. Their own interview statements contradict many of the allegations in the lawsuit.”
The department’s Administrative Disciplinary Committee found no violations of law or policy, Rosen wrote.
The full statement is here. Make of it what you will.
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I’m not sure if Rosen was ever in the running to be next sheriff but this has got to rule him out, you think?
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