By Jeff McDonald, Tammy Murga
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — A San Diego County jury has awarded a former National City police officer $10 million in damages after she said the department sexually harassed, discriminated against and retaliated against her and tolerated a hostile work environment.
Jurors agreed that Ashley Cummins was singled out for abuse by several National City Police Department workers and that senior commanders did little to stop the abuse.
The lawsuit and subsequent trial portrayed the department as a small-town agency rife with sexual harassment against women, and a command staff unwilling to enforce anti-discrimination policies or punish even repeat offenders.
The monetary damages awarded to Cummins amount to almost one-third of the National City Police Department’s $33 million budget, and nearly 15% of the city’s entire general fund.
It also comes at a time when the City Council is confronting a multimillion-dollar budget deficit — and a state bar complaint filed against City Attorney Barry Schultz. Details of the complaint, filed by a member of the City Council, have not been publicly disclosed.
Schultz declined to discuss the complaint but said the city strongly disagrees with the jury verdict.
“The City Council will be meeting in closed session (Tuesday) evening to discuss the verdict and will consider all legal options including appeal,” he said by email. “The city may have an additional statement after the closed session meeting.”
After a brief trial that concluded last week, the jury awarded Cummins a total of $10 million. The damages included about $166,000 in lost wages, $1.4 million in future economic losses and $4.2 million each in past and future non-economic losses.
“We always believed our client was wronged and had viable legal claims for sexual harassment and discrimination,” said her attorneys, Jeffrey Hogue and Tyler Belong, in a statement.
“Ultimately, we presented those legal claims to a jury to decide,” they said. “We are grateful the jury found for our client on all accounts and awarded a just verdict.”
Cummins joined the National City Police Department in 2018 after eight years with the St. Louis County Police Department, the largest police agency in the state of Missouri.
While working for the county department, Cummins served special assignments with federal task forces run by both the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. She sought a position with National City for family reasons in 2018.
According to trial testimony and the lawsuit, Cummins is openly gay and began being harassed by fellow officers and some supervisors almost as soon as she arrived.
“The bullying and harassment were a result of the culture at NCPD that expected male officers to excel above female officers and expected female officers to be submissive to their male counterparts,” she said in her lawsuit.
“In fact, many of the male officers and supervisors indicated that if female officers wanted to fit in at NCPD, they either needed to be submissive to the male officers or sleep with them,” the complaint added.
Cummins complained on several occasions about the behavior exhibited by several officers, but nothing was done, the lawsuit alleged.
She was not the first woman to register concerns with the way she was treated by the agency, she said.
“At least one sergeant at NCPD has responded to a female officer’s discrimination complaint by saying ‘I’ve had a female officer file a complaint about me before’,” the lawsuit said. “‘Don’t be that cop. If you do that, you’ll be just another female cop who plays [the female card] because she can’t handle National City’.
“‘Things will just get worse for you if you do that’,” the sergeant added, according to the lawsuit.
In 2019, in response to a bullying and harassment complaint filed by another female police officer, a sergeant asked Cummins “if she had any dirt” on the complaining officer, the complaint added.
“As such, Ms. Cummins was discouraged and intimidated from making a formal report to IA (Internal Affairs),” the lawsuit said.
According to her lawsuit, the harassment grew so bad that fellow officers sometimes yelled at her over the police radio — or directed her to leave crime scenes. She alleged that at one point, another officer put Cummins in danger by failing to search a homicide suspect for weapons, breaking protocol, and not telling Cummins.
Cummins was singled out in other ways as well, according to her lawyers.
She was passed over for a promotion to a K-9 assignment, even though the male officer hired for the job had much less experience, and she was placed on leave after a shooting even though she was not involved in the confrontation, the lawsuit said.
“After she returned to work from her administrative leave, defendants made sure everyone stayed away from Ms. Cummins,” the lawsuit said.
The city is already facing a $5 million budget deficit, which prompted city leaders to implement a hiring freeze and a cap on departments’ operation and maintenance costs.
Councilmember Marcus Bush has been outspoken in his criticism of city expenses amid the budgetary shortfall, particularly out of the City Attorney’s Office.
At the March 18 City Council meeting, Bush raised concerns with his council colleagues about a request from Schultz to pay Devaney Pate Morris & Cameron LLP an additional $25,000 — the third request since January 2024 — for legal services regarding the San Diego Unified Port District.
Schultz, who previously worked for the firm, said its expertise has been vital for National City and that he provided Bush with invoices detailing the work.
But Bush said he could not support the city’s continuing use of the firm. He and Councilmember Luz Molina voted against the expense.
“From a budget standpoint and the fact that we do have a projected deficit, I want to be more mindful of how we’re paying these outside consultants and, particularly, when I think that our staff needs to be doing more to push this stuff,” Bush said.
Bush filed a complaint with the California State Bar against the city attorney. The council member declined to provide specifics about the complaint and the state bar declined to say whether it had received the claim.
In December, the city received an invoice from a downtown firm for more than $9,400 for work described only as “State Bar Complaint adverse Schultz. City Manager Benjamin Martinez approved the payment in January.
On Tuesday, the City Council is expected to vote on the expense. It also will consider paying an additional $50,000 to Schultz’s former law firm for its work on the Cummins litigation.
Cummins is now a mixed martial arts athlete who lives in Chula Vista and competes under the name Ashley “Smashley” Cummins. She also teaches part time at the police academy but says she has not been able to resume her law enforcement career.
“Ashley feels vindicated, and is overcome with emotion” as a result of the jury verdict, her attorneys said. “She has applied at many different police departments, but hasn’t gotten a job because of the lawsuit.”
—
©2025 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.