River Rouge officer sues police department, city for alleged discrimination

A River Rouge police officer is suing the police department, top police officials and the city for alleged racial and sexual discrimination and harassment.

Rosa Holly, a Black woman, is the only female officer in the River Rouge Police Department, according to a complaint her lawyers filed Dec. 7 in Wayne County Circuit Court.

Citing dozens of alleged workplace harassment incidents in three years, Holly is seeking up to $2 million.

"No woman should be subjected to this level of sexual harassment by her superior officers," said Anthony Adams, one of the attorneys representing Holly.

The River Rouge mayor's office and police department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Holly worked as a police department dispatcher starting in 2016 but enrolled in the city's police academy in 2020 as officials sought to hire more officers living in or with ties to River Rouge, the suit said.

Former Police Chief Deborah Price had mentored Holly in 2016, encouraging her to become a police officer when the next position opened, according to the complaint.

Holly entered the police academy with this in mind and began encountering threats, humiliation, harassment and retaliations from officials, the filing stated.

Under Roberto Cruz, the public safety director, Holly experienced a hostile work environment that discriminated against Black people "with impunity by white officers," according to the complaint.

Cruz first fired and rehired Holly while she was at the police academy, her lawyers contend.

He and other top officials, including a commander, went on to punish and publicly reprimand Holly for multiple unverified allegations against her, according to the suit.

They allegedly sent the River Rouge dog catcher to Holly's home to deliver termination papers in her mailbox on June 14, 2021. The dog catcher said he had never delivered termination papers to any other employee's home before.

Holly was also forced to change, shower and use the bathroom in same common area as male officers, according to the complaint.

On one occasion, her union representative faced no discipline after urinating in the sink of a shared bathroom because "he did not break any rules or regulations," according to the complaint.

The commander accused Holly in July of leaving the city without permission, citing a nonexistent email as proof. He threatened to rescind Holly's "bathroom and lunch privileges" if she continued to break the rules.

Holly also alleges he instructed an inspector to verbally reprimand her in May 2023 for not fueling the patrol car, taking required fire gear, having untied boots, being passive aggressive and being late to work.

Holly denied all those allegations and told the inspector the commander was upset because she refused a sexual relationship with him, according to the complaint.

Holly had asked the commander to not contact her on her personal phone and rejected numerous attempts to engage in a sexual relationship. He harassed her, made accusations against her and threatened her career in retaliation, according to the complaint.

The inspector later approached him to say officers on the midnight shift "felt targeted, harassed, retaliated against, threatened and discriminated against racially," Holly's lawyers wrote.

The commander "responded with indifference and apathy and said, 'it will not stop him from doing the job he was promoted to do,'" according to the complaint.

Holly filed a formal complaint in July against, Cruz, the commander and the police department. In retaliation, according to the suit, the commander was then placed on her shift as her direct supervisor, where he allegedly threatened Holly directly and indirectly.

All other African American officers in the department were also removed from the midnight shift except for Holly, the filing alleges.

The complaint lists five counts, including sex discrimination, sex discrimination in a hostile work environment, race discrimination, retaliation and emotional distress.

"We were stonewalled on numerous occasions with supposedly internal investigations that they were undertaking, but they never came to anything," Adams said of attempted communications with the city before filing the complaint.