A former police officer last week filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Village of Orland Park, a Chicago suburb, alleging he was fired in retaliation for complaining about being denied a promotion because of his Hispanic Latino identity.
William Sanchez, who is Mexican-American, had served in the Orland Park Police Department for 19 years by May of 2023 when he went to Chief of Police Eric Rossi to discuss his frustration over not being promoted to the rank of lieutenant.
According to his complaint, Rossi had told him he would be promoted from sergeant to lieutenant when he took over as supervisor in the Traffic Safety Unit (TSU) after Lt. Phil Glecier retired. But 10 months after he stepped into the role, he remained a sergeant.
Sanchez said by his count, five previous TSU supervisors, all of whom were white, had either entered the position as a lieutenant or were promoted to that rank soon after taking on the supervisory role.
He’d had good job performance reviews and no significant history of discipline or misconduct, the lawsuit says. Sanchez couldn’t point to any legitimate justification for the Village’s differential treatment of him compared to previous TSU supervisors and had come to believe that his race was the reason he was denied a promotion.
Sanchez also thought his race might be behind his lack of advancement because the white leaders of the police department had “previously displayed troubling attitudes toward race,” the complaint says.
That included one white officer who had been photographed wearing blackface and was recorded “making racially-charged remarks toward an African American arrestee,” and who had since been twice promoted, the lawsuit says, and another white officer who was hired despite a background check revealing he’d made comments about lynching a Black suspect.
Sanchez claims Interim Assistant Village Manager Brian West “harbored a particular animus toward him” and had previously told others he considered Sanchez to be a “rat” and a “snake” for filing two EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) complaints against him (which Sanchez had not actually done, he said). West had been deputy police chief at the time of the events outlined in Sanchez’s complaint.
So Sanchez “had a good-faith, reasonable belief” that the Village was denying him a promotion to lieutenant because of his race when he voiced that concern to Rossi, the lawsuit says. Rossi told Sanchez if he felt he was being discriminated against he should file a formal complaint in writing.
After consulting with an attorney, Sanchez did just that, filing an internal complaint with the Village of Orland Park human resources department, as well as a complaint of discrimination with the Illinois Department of Human Rights and later, a charge of discrimination with the EEOC, all alleging he was denied a promotion because he is “Hispanic/Latino.”
One week after Sanchez filed his HR complaint and EEOC inquiry, West filed his own complaint with HR alleging that Sanchez and two other subordinate employees in the police department “had somehow created a ‘hostile work environment’ for him by making purportedly unfounded complaints against him” and by working with their local labor union, of which Sanchez was president, to remove West from his position, according to Sanchez’s complaint.
This triggered a joint investigation into the respective complaints of Sanchez and West, led by an independent third party, Jimmy Lee of Gold Shield Detective Agency.
“The investigation was a sham, its outcome predetermined,” Sanchez’s complaint says, alleging that Lee, an active police chief and a member of multiple police chief associations at the time, was “hardly neutral.”
In December of 2023, Lee’s report deemed Sanchez’s allegations of discrimination to be unfounded while sustaining West’s allegation of a hostile work environment. The report said Sanchez made false statements, which his attorneys now argue were “largely instances where the Village or Lee simply disagree with Plaintiff’s conclusions … that he was denied job opportunities because of his race.”
In January of 2024, Sanchez was put on paid administrative leave and informed that he might be fired for misconduct, which the Village identified as the filing of “complaints … alleging that [his superiors] engaged in conduct to deny you benefits based on your national origin.”
In March of 2024, Sanchez was terminated for misconduct that included filing “unfounded” complaints of discrimination and retaliation “intended to discredit the OPPD, harass D.C. West and force Chief Rossi to remove D.C. West.”
Believing all of his filing of complaints was “indisputably protected activity,” Sanchez filed a grievance with his union, the Orland Park Police Supervisors Association, challenging the termination and demanding arbitration, per the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the Village.
After four days of testimony, arbitrator James Dworkin found that Sanchez “was not discharged for just cause” and ordered the Village to reinstate him and pay him for all financial losses suffered.
The Village refused to reinstate him and countered by filing a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court asking the court to vacate the arbitrator’s decision, reported the Chicago Sun Times.
In a statement released on Jan. 28, the Village said it “acknowledges the Arbitrator’s decision in the matter of former police officer William Sanchez’s termination; however, the Village strongly disagrees with its outcome. … The Village had clear and justifiable reasons for its decision, supported by substantial evidence showing that Mr. Sanchez engaged in conduct detrimental to the operations and leadership of the Police Department.”
In his lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on March 14, Sanchez claims that the Village of Orland Park and four individual defendants, including Rossi, West, Lee and and former Village Manager George Koczwara retaliated against him in violation of federal civil rights law by terminating his employment after he voiced his concerns and made formal complaints about racial discrimination in the department’s promotion practices.
He claims damage to his reputation, lost wages, loss of training and promotional opportunities, mental anguish and distress, and seeks a jury trial to determine “complete make-whole relief,” including reinstatement, constructive seniority, back pay and front pay, pension and fringe benefits, compensatory and punitive damages.
Sanchez also wants the court to bar the Village and its employees and agents from retaliating or threatening to retaliate against police officers who make reasonable good-faith complaints of discrimination in the future that the Village deems to be unfounded.
An initial status hearing in the case is set for May 28 in the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins.
