Deputy James Mee, Mel Gibson's Arresting Officer, Sues LA County Sheriff's Department

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles sheriff's deputy who arrested Mel Gibson for drunken driving in 2006 sued his department on Tuesday, claiming he has since been ostracized and passed over for promotions by the agency.

Deputy James Mee's lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for loss of income, benefits, medical expenses and for emotional distress and mental suffering. Mee, who is Jewish, claims he was forced by his superiors to remove references to anti-Semitic slurs uttered by the actor-director during the arrest. Part of that report containing the slurs was leaked to the celebrity website TMZ.com, which also first reported the lawsuit.

Mee claims he was transferred after Gibson's arrest and has not been awarded promotions to a traffic investigator or motorcycle deputy position because of the alleged discrimination. The lawsuit claims the department violated its policies by taking four years to investigate the leak and that has hurt Mee's ability to be promoted.

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore denied the allegations.

"The whole story is not being told in this lawsuit and we look forward to telling it," Whitmore said. "It has nothing to do with religious discrimination. We categorically deny those allegations."

Mee was the subject of a criminal investigation into the leaking of his initial report. The Los Angeles district attorney's office declined to file charges against the deputy.

Mee joined the sheriff's department in May 1989, according to his lawsuit.

In addition to stating that he was forced to alter his report on Gibson's arrest, the lawsuit claims one of his sergeants erased a videotape taken of Gibson in a booking area.

Mee's attorney, Etan Z. Lorant, said the video was taken with a handheld camera and showed Gibson uttering religious slurs. The filing claims the deputy was discriminated against after complaining about the taping and being forced to change his initial report on the arrest.

Whitmore said none of the evidence taken during Gibson's arrest had been destroyed.

Lorant said Mee, 55, wants his reputation with the department to be restored and he hopes the lawsuit will resolve that.

"He's done nothing wrong," Lorant said.

Gibson apologized for his anti-Semitic tirade after his arrest, saying that he had battled alcoholism for all of his adult life. He complied with all the terms of the probation given in the drunken driving case, and his conviction was expunged last year.

The Academy Award-winning director and actor has been embroiled in a bitter custody fight with his ex-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, over their infant daughter. Grigorieva said Gibson physically abused her in January and the sheriff's department turned over its investigation of her complaint – made months after the incident – to the district attorney. Grigorieva remains under investigation for possible extortion, which Gibson claimed after the custody case was filed.

Comments

[Batteredbypd]

12:29 AM on 09/09/2010

Well we all know the LA Sheriffs can be some Crooked & Corrupt LIARS.....This sounds about accurate to me.....

[berserk]

11:38 AM on 09/08/2010

I totally believe him.

[namdlogd]

02:38 AM on 09/08/2010

Somethings rotten here, I remember hearing about the two reports, the one with the racial slurs included and then one with them redacted, that right there is the rub, and that right there will be the reason Mee is given his fair due. Egg on the face of LAPD for attempted preferential treatment of a celebrity is not enough to ruin a good cops career.

[kgb999]

12:13 PM on 09/08/2010

I don't get the "ergo" here. Sure, maybe there was egg on the face of LAPD ... a little. It isn't unprecedented for field reports to be cleaned up for the final filed documents to focus on the offenses that the subject has been charged with. It turns out, ranting about Jews isn't illegal and isn't in any way germane to the charges brought against Gibson ... inclusion of his views in this regard would simply be to induce a prejudicial reaction from a jury.

I just don't see how the two versions of the report prove that his career was ruined over his religion - they sort of prove the opposite. It seems to be the real question is if he's the one leaking information to TMZ .... a publication known for paying cops (or anyone else) to leak internal documents. Going to TMZ with documents can often be a crime, whereas omitting the irrelevant (to the charges brought) - if salacious - rants by a citizen exercising their 1st Amendment rights is simply a procedural decision and not even particularly ethically questionable (unless you think cops should be in the business of shaming folks for unenlightened viewpoints in addition enforcing the actual law).

An officer that is suspected of leaking confidential internal reports to the press when they disagree with their supervisors isn't being discriminated against because of their religion, they are being passed over because they can't be trusted around sensitive internal information.

[Trac McCuistion]

01:24 PM on 09/08/2010

Apples and oranges. The officer who filed a complete report was frozen in his position because it wasn't PC to mess with the celebrity. LAPD is on the suck end of this dick.

[dbrett480]

05:32 PM on 09/08/2010

Deputy Mee included Gibson's rants in his reports to bolster the case for Gibson being drunk. A supervisor ordering a deputy to remove this information from the report is very suspicious.

I agree that it isn't unprecedented for arrest reports to be "cleaned up," but that usually refers to grammatical or spelling changes and never removal of content.

[lachihuahua]

01:34 PM on 09/08/2010

Different agency. It wasn't the LAPD. It was the LA County Sheriff's Department. The gentleman was not a Police Officer, he was a Sheriff's Deputy. LAPD does plenty wrong, but they shouldn't get tagged with this one. (nn)

[namdlogd]

03:05 PM on 09/08/2010

Fair enough, I stand corrected, thank you.

[dbrett480]

02:24 AM on 09/08/2010

Basically if you are a hardworking deputy who treats everyone fairly (including the boss's friends) you get punished. The supervisors should have backed Mee up for doing his job by the book, instead of trying to make big daddy Baca happy and get another promotion.

[StacyJ]

01:52 AM on 09/08/2010

The LA Times had more comprehensive coverage of the story.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mel-gibson-deputy-20100908,0,5461420.story

[cpad]

01:55 AM on 09/08/2010

Thanks for the link. These HuffPost stories always just skim the surface.

[kgb999]

12:19 PM on 09/08/2010

Good link.

[dbrett480]

01:18 AM on 09/08/2010

Mee never should have altered his report and when he was instructed to do so he should have immediately contacted his union rep. That being said I'm not surprised that LA Sheriff "management" would want to thrown a deputy under the bus just so a major celebrity would look good.

[Lost Angeles]

10:59 PM on 09/07/2010

"....the lawsuit claims one of his sergeants erased a videotape taken of Gibson in a booking area."
Whitmore said none of the evidence taken during Gibson's arrest had been destroyed.
Well then, it seems it should be presentable in court then.

[sloreader]

09:32 PM on 09/07/2010

Altering or ginning up a police report should be a hard-time felony in every jurisdiction. If there is evidence of misconduct in this case it should be met with the harshest repurcussions because enforcement of the rule of law starts with officers of the court, first and foremost.

[sharpstick]

02:49 AM on 09/08/2010

Now why do you think a no brainer like that isn't already the law?

LOL. Let's try and stay on planet earth okay ;)