Former SEPTA Deputy Police Chief Sues Secretary of State John Kerry, Others
Former SEPTA Deputy Police Chief David Scott (top center), pictured with City Councilwoman Cindy Bass, City Councilman David Oh, and SEPTA police officers in a 2012 SEPTA photo.
David Scott was a SEPTA transit police officer for over 30 years and served as deputy SEPTA police chief for over 18 years. After retiring a few years ago, he consulted with the United States government on anti-terrorism, and now he is suing Secretary of State John Kerry and others, claiming he is the victim of racial discrimination.
The Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security contains a Global Anti-Terrorism Assistance Office, and one program operated by a training division of that branch is called “Preventing Terrorist Attacks on Bus and Rail Systems.” Scott, a Cheltenham resident and member of the local NAACP board, was vetted by the government and conducted that training program in Indonesia, Brazil and Panama in 2013. He says he was the only African American on the six-person training team.
In the lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia’s federal court this week, Scott alleges that a member of a cyber security team accompanying his in Brazil made racially insensitive remarks to him and also threw food at him. Scott says he confronted the offender and that the team manager “appeared agitated” over Scott’s complaints.
After that, Scott applied for more training missions but says that he stopped receiving responses to his applications. He pressed to get answers and claims he was eventually told that he had been removed from the list of vetted instructors, that he was “not to be used.”
Scott filed a formal complaint with the State Department’s Office of Civil Rights and alleges that the team manager from Brazil lied to the investigator by reporting that Scott had “strayed from the curriculum” in Brazil. Scott says that’s not true, adding that he was told immediately after the trip that he had performed well. He claims that it was the manager — not him — who strayed from the curriculum.
In the lawsuit, Scott says that the decision to dismiss him was based on his race and his complaints over the racial remarks. He’s also suing for alleged violations of the Freedom of Information Act, because the government hasn’t provided him with documentation about his removal from the vetted list, as he formally requested last November.
Scott is seeking unspecified damages and names as defendants the manager whom he says lied and two unidentified individuals within the Global Anti-Terrorism Assistance Office, in addition to Secretary of State John Kerry.
