A former deputy is filing a lawsuit against Oconee County and the sheriff for discrimination.
Ex-deputy Lisa Price claims sheriff Scott Berry and other superiors maintained a file criticizing her performance with “derogatory remarks and unfair criticism.”
Price says Lt. Griffin Attaberry brought the file to her attention in summer 2014. Attaberry, who currently works in private business, told Price that the file would be destroyed. One year later, Price was terminated from employment on July 14, 2015. Price claims the file was not destroyed at her time of termination.
Price filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on April 7, 2015 for alleged discrimination on the basis of sex. One example Price offers of this discrimination is lack of promotion. She says Male officers that she had trained all received sargeant promotions over her, despite one officer having a “serious safety in fracture” writeup two weeks prior. She claims her termination was a response to this complaint file.
Sheriff Berry disagrees.
“Since January of 2013 she (Lisa Price) had no proactive law enforcement activity in over 2 years and 4 months and that’s not acceptable,” says Berry. “We took action based on that. We counseled her based on that. We gave her an opportunity to fix that and she chose not to so I terminated her employment.
Reporter Danielle Lewan will bring you updates on this story as they come. Stay tuned.
By Alexander Contreras
