RIVER ROUGE, Mich. – A River Rouge police officer is suing her bosses for $2 million, claiming sexual harassment and racial discrimination.
The River Rouge Police Department is small and primarily male, and its first-ever Black female police officer says she was mistreated daily on the job.
The filing claims and details extensive harassment by the police chief and one of his commanders against officer Rosa Holly.
Holly, a River Rouge resident, claims, among other things, that as a female officer who performs both police and firefighter duty, there is no accommodation for her to change her clothes or have a women’s restroom.
“It’s just become unbearable at this point,” said Holly.
Holly started with the department as a police dispatcher and did the job for four years.
The former female police chief, who has since died, encouraged her to become a full-time police officer, and because the police also work as firefighters, she qualified and took the job.
But she says her life worsened when the new police chief, Robert Cruz, took over.
“It’s like 1930s Mississippi,” said Attorney Michael Fortner.
Fortner represents Holly along with Attorney Anthony Adams. He says she’s getting racially disparate treatment and, worse, getting sexually harassed as well.
“She’s got text messages from a superior officer threatening her on the one hand and asking her out for dates, sexual suggestions, so what she’s gone through no one should have to go through in this day and age,” Fortner said.
Holly claims the department’s leadership deliberately punished her for things she did not do, like taking police equipment home, shortchanging her on her clothing allowance, and citing her for not wearing proper uniform clothing.
They even improperly accused her of misusing the police gasoline card.
“I would like to be able to do the job that I love in the city that I love without being harassed and mistreated and scrutinized,” Holly said.
We at Local 4 looked to get comments from the city as we went to River Rouge City Hall, which also houses the police department.
We asked to speak with the chief, but he was not available. We also visited the mayor’s office and asked for comments, but He was in a meeting. We later called both the chief and the mayor, but they never responded.
