Ex-Monterey cop loses whistleblower lawsuit against the city.

Bryce Morgan had been a patrol officer with the Monterey Police Department for only four years when, in November 2018, he filed a lawsuit claiming superiors ordered him to meet illegal quotas for writing traffic citations and that when he balked at the directive, he was harassed and retaliated against. 

Among the actions he said were taken against him, starting in 2017: negative reports placed in his personnel file; unwarranted counseling sessions; transfers to various supervisors and increased scrutiny; an Internal Affairs investigation; and placement on a Performance Improvement Plan that lasted longer, he claimed, than seemed reasonable. 

But Morgan's suit centered on only one question: Did the city of Monterey retaliate against him after he complained about the purported quota system? On Friday, after a three-week trial in Monterey County Superior Court, a jury came back with the answer: While Morgan may have complained about a quota system, the city didn't retaliate against him for those complaints. 

The jury arrived at the verdict just about 30 minutes after they started deliberating. It was the first jury trial in Monterey County's civil court system since the start of the pandemic.

During closing arguments, defense attorney William Price told the jurors that the city never had a required number—of Morgan or any other officer—in terms of arrests made or citations written. But, he added, Morgan's supervisors were allowed to use the number of arrests he made or the number of citations he wrote as one of the benchmarks of his performance. 

"Can a department consider officer statistics at all…and the answer is yeah, it's absolutely permissible," Price said. "You can consider any part of an officer's statistical performance, as long as that's not the sole criteria on which you are evaluating their performance."

During the trial, the city presented evidence that Morgan spent vast amounts of time just parked in his patrol vehicle, not writing reports and not making contact with citizens—just sitting. He also routinely neglected to fill out log sheets explaining how he had spent his shift.

Instead of firing him, the department transferred him to various different supervising sergeants, each time giving him the equivalent of a fresh start.

"He was evaluated on a lot of different criteria, of which productivity was only one," Price said. "Like any employment, productivity matters. It matters for police officers…as long as you're not solely measuring them by arrest and citation stats."

Attorney Brad Gage, who represented Morgan, noted that since joining the Hollister Police Department after he left Monterey PD, Morgan had been promoted already. In his closing argument, Gage told the jury that higher-ups wanted Morgan to arrest homeless people for infraction-level offenses, such as having glass bottles on the beach, for building fires on the beach and for having unlicensed dogs. 

"There as no legitimate reason for the increased scrutiny and Performance Improvement Plan he faced," Gage told jurors, adding that Morgan was placed on PIP two days after Monterey Police Chief Dave Hober was deposed in the lawsuit.

Post-verdict, Gage said after talking to jurors, the amount of time Morgan spent parked and the defense claims on Morgan's lack of productivity were factors in their decisions. 

Morgan left the Monterey Police Department and joined the Hollister Police Department, where he's since been promoted. 

"I do think he's going to have a great career and what they said about him was unfair and probably some of it was untrue," Gage said. "But now he's demonstrated that he's a great officer and a great human being. I believe he's the kind of police officer the world needs."