Lieutenant's lawsuit is the latest salvo in a years-long feud

For over two years, Lt. John O'Neil has been bounced around units, while facing a flood of EEO and OPA complaints from subordinates. Now, he's suing SPD.

Last week, Seattle Police Lieutenant John O’Neil filed a lawsuit claiming that he’s experienced frivolous complaints, racism, harassment, and punitive transfers. While the courts will decide whether these claims add up to a hostile workplace in the strict legal sense, it’s clear he’s faced a lot of hostility on the job.

Some would say it’s well-deserved—like the four women officers who filed a suit last year, accusing O’Neil of sexual harassment and retaliation. Before that, they collectively filed eight Office of Police Accountability complaints and opened almost as many Equal Employment Opportunity investigations, none of which were sustained.

However, O’Neil counters that his disciplinary record was squeaky clean for most of his career. In his first 18 years, he averaged about one complaint per decade, which is no mean feat in Seattle policing. O’Neil says his troubles started when he took over the K9 unit in 2021 and started butting heads with the lead trainer, Anthony Ducre.

Dogged by EEO complaints

O’Neil was tasked with whipping the K9 unit into shape and addressing the issues highlighted by the Office of the Inspector General (some of which Ducre directly contributed to as a frequent subject of OPA complaints). The audit identified problems with supervision in the early stages of training, so O’Neil took a firm hand, and Ducre bucked.

A rift between the two emerged when Ducre overstepped his boundaries. O’Neil sent him to Pierce County to observe and advise two SPD K9 officers in training, but he was interfering, arguing, and acting like a supervisor. Later, Ducre pitched a fit when O’Neil disagreed about whether his trainees were ready for the street.

After Ducre’s dog was stabbed to death, for which O’Neil faulted Ducre, he brought in a permanent trainer. In response, Ducre filed an EEO complaint alleging “reverse racism” because O’Neil took down pictures of K9 handlers, some of whom were white, in the lieutenant’s office and replaced them with photos of his family.

Purportedly in response to the EEO complaint, Command transferred O’Neil to an administrative lieutenant position, described in the lawsuit as “a dreaded ‘desk job’ for lieutenants who were not well liked or who were being punished for performance issues.”

Kame Spencer, one of Ducre’s trainees, also filed an EEO complaint against O’Neil over the removal of the trainer photos. In the lawsuit, O’Neil claimed that Spencer, one of the four women who later filed the sexual harassment tort, was dating Ducre at the time. (Side note: Like Ducre’s dog Jedi, Spencer’s dog Thor also accidentally mauled a person).

Affairs: Too public

O’Neil eventually landed in the Public Affairs Office, where he supervised Jean Gulpan and Valerie Carson—two of the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit against him. Per the suit, when he entered the unit, he “was met with fierce resistance by existing members.”

The entire office revolted, according to a complaint O’Neil filed against Carson. He says that Carson had it out for him from the beginning. She allegedly refused to do interviews and told him, “nobody wants you here.”

The lawsuit claims that Gulpan also became insubordinate and lax in her duties after O’Neil spurned her advances. But Gulpan says it was the other way around. She says that he invited her to dinner alone in Las Vegas and told her that he was “good at sex.”

O’Neil alleges that Gulpan and Carson filed EEO complaints to get him back for writing them up for performance issues, insubordination, and misusing sick time. One of O’Neil’s complaints against Gulpan was addressed informally through an HR improvement plan, but OPA also investigated it and found minor issues that didn’t equal a policy violation.

Lt. Lauren Truscott, the fourth officer in the tort against O’Neil, filed a complaint and an EEO investigation after O’Neil pulled her aside for a private chat about Gulpan. In the complaint, she wrote that he made baseless accusations that Gulpan was stealing time and other issues that were addressed in the above OPA complaint.

Truscott wrote that while investigating what O’Neil said, she discovered a “disturbing pattern and practice of sexual harassment and sexual discrimination” against his subordinates Spencer, Carson, and Gulpan. This became the basis for their lawsuit a few months later. The OPA ultimately ruled Truscott’s complaint was unfounded.

In an interview with KUOW, Truscott called O’Neil a “serial harasser,” which O’Neil called “slander.” O’Neil claims that Truscott is orchestrating a campaign against him with the department’s tacit blessing. He says six women officers reported to HR that they were “recruited” to file complaints.

SPD policy states that employees cannot talk to the press without permission. The complaint O’Neil filed against Truscott for this wasn’t sustained. OPA cited ambiguities in the policy.

After talking to Interim Chief Sue Rahr, O’Neil got a prestigious assignment to head the CSI unit, but that was thwarted by two officers filing “EEO complaints alleging events from 13 years ago.”

O’Neil was assigned again to be an administrative lieutenant before being transferred to the graveyard shift in the South Precinct.