The Long Beach Police Department has settled a lawsuit filed by its first Black helicopter pilot who alleged years of racial discrimination .
According to the Atlanta Black Star , Michael Colbert , a former LBPD helicopter pilot, was recently awarded $500,000 to settle a racial discrimination lawsuit filed in December 2021.
Colbert said he was regularly subjected to racism by his coworkers and supervisors, targeted in performance reviews, and unfairly demoted and blamed for helicopter maintenance issues.
“I was ridiculed for things that I never should have been ridiculed for,” Colbert previously told the Long Beach Post . “And the constant demeaning, it tears you down.”
In a 1990 incident, a new training officer referred to a Central Long Beach neighborhood as “Ni—rVille,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also claims that someone once placed a banana peel on the hood of Colbert’s police car. Citing a racially hostile environment, Colbert claimed that his supervisor kept a hand-drawn “blackface” sketch of a Dragon Ball character displayed in his office for years.