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Jessenia Guzman
NYPD via NY Post
An NYPD officer who was reprimanded for speaking to a colleague in Spanish in 2013 is now suing the department for the “discriminatory” and “humiliating” incident, the New York Post reports.
Jessenia Guzman, whose family is from the Dominican Republic, is claiming that the department’s English-only policy violates her civil and constiutional rights and is demanding unspecified damages.
The incident unfolded in 2013 when Guzman says a supervisor wrote her up for “a quick interaction with a co-worker in Spanish.”
According to Guzman, a 16-year-old veteran with the NYPD, the co-worker asked her “What’s up?” in Spanish, and she responded in kind, saying “Nothing, just chillin.'”
The 43-year-old says that the “quick, benign question,” and response ended causing a command discipline memo to be submitted to her personnel file. Guzman said that she didn’t even know that the rule existed.
According to the Post, the suit was dismissed in federal court partially because of jurisdictional issues, Guzman’s supervisor refuted her version of events, saying that the conversation was “more egregious” than a simple greeting.
Lt. Richard Khalaf claimed that Guzman was “continually” speaking in Spanish to another officer while he was standing in front of her.
An NYPD spokesperson commented that “with over 50 different languages spoken by employees of the Department, our Office of Equal Employment Opportunity has established guidelines for members to speak English when they are conducting business for the department, unless speaking a foreign language is necessary to perform his or her duties,” the Post notes.
Read more at the New York Post.
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