A Black California mayor filed two lawsuits against her city that compile two of three separate legal claims she made last year alleging racial and gender discrimination, invasion of privacy, and mismanagement of her retirement fund.
After the city of Rialto, California, rejected her claims, Mayor Deborah Robertson has taken steps to start civil proceedings. One of those related claims stems from the city’s response to the mass shooting in San Bernardino in 2015 that killed 14 people and injured nearly two dozen others.
Following the shooting, the city hired a security consultant to conduct a risk assessment at City Hall. Robertson alleged the city manager and city council members discriminated against her by not providing her with a special security door for active shooter situations despite giving her Latino colleague one.
In that assessment, the consultant never recommended the installation of security doors, but city officials ordered a door for Councilman Raphael Trujillo’s office that was installed in November 2020. Five months later, they installed a door on Robertson’s office.
In a claim Robertson filed last year, she alleged that “the City immediately installed a security door in one of my Caucasian male colleague’s office” right after the assessment was completed, while completely ignoring her personal safety concerns.
Acting City Manager Arron Brown told the San Bernardino Sun that Trujillo is Latino, not Caucasian, and the doors were installed years after the security assessment.
In another claim she filed in March 2023, she alleged that the city police department ran her name through their database on “various” and “unknown” dates without a legitimate law enforcement purpose. She stated that a confidential informant alerted her that the searches took place on the premises of the police and fire departments.
Robertson said the Rialto police chief sent her an email in 2022 confirming that her name appeared in 10 separate searches in the police database.
In 2021, the city agreed to pay Councilman Ed Scott $500,000 after he alleged that his two sons’ names were run through that same database several times over a two-day period in 2016. Scott believed someone only wanted to find dirt on him and his family to upset his re-election bid.
The other claim Robertson made in February 2023 seeks a $482,000 reimbursement after the city mistakenly diverted her retirement into a 457 plan instead of a 401(a) fund.
The damages she seeks from all three claims amount to over $7.4 million.
Robertson is running for re-election this year. She has served as the mayor of Rialto since 2012.
Trujillo, who is running against her, denounced the claims.
“She’s so embroiled in all these lawsuits, she’s lost sight of the direction of the city,” Trujillo told the Daily Mail. “You start to question what her intentions are: being a steward of our taxpayer dollars? Or is it to have personal gains from the taxpayers?”
The city of Rialto is located in San Bernardino County.
