A Brentwood police detective has filed a lawsuit alleging a fellow officer subjected her to racial and sexual harassment for months, including once asking whether she should “get a vote or three-fifths of a vote” — a reference to the clause in the original U.S. Constitution that counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for population purposes. Detective Amber Hawkins says Chief Joseph Spiess Jr. dismissed her complaints as “horseplay” and told her to develop a thicker skin.
Hawkins was hired as a patrol officer by the City of Brentwood in January 2024 and was later promoted to detective for retail theft investigations, according to the lawsuit detailed by First Alert 4. The remark about a “three-fifths” vote was allegedly made by Officer Theran Johnson on June 17, 2025, in Brentwood. Hawkins claims Johnson also implied she was a diversity hire and made other racist and sexist comments toward her throughout her time on the force.
The lawsuit describes a pattern of behavior well beyond a single comment. Johnson allegedly told Hawkins she received her salary and vacation time because she is a Black woman and because the human resources manager is also a Black woman. He reportedly sent text messages disparaging a detective as not “manly enough,” and separately created a fake Facebook account to disparage Hawkins' creditworthiness, according to the suit. Johnson is also accused of posting information about a detective on dating websites and falsely alleging that Hawkins struggled with substance abuse, instability, and suicidal ideation.
Officer Accused of Ostracizing Detective After She Complained
After Hawkins reported the alleged harassment and discriminatory conduct to the city on July 11, 2025, the suit claims Johnson withdrew his support for her, ostracized her, and engaged in what the filing calls cyberbullying. Hawkins says she then faced retaliatory complaints of discrimination and harassment from Johnson and received increased scrutiny and criticism for having come forward at all.
The lawsuit also alleges that Hawkins was assigned work unrelated to her duties as a retail theft detective and was denied access to information and assistance she needed to perform her job, along with being cut off from information about law enforcement seminars and training opportunities. She says the alleged conduct created a hostile work environment, caused her emotional distress, and damaged her professional reputation.
According to the lawsuit, the City of Brentwood treated Hawkins' report as an internal affairs complaint rather than launching a full investigation, and the police department itself handled the inquiry into her claims instead of the human resources manager. Separately, the suit alleges that Johnson acted in an aggressive and hostile manner toward women and Black suspects, and that he was accused of hitting a handcuffed Black juvenile who was in custody.
Chief's Response and Department Background
Chief Spiess, who has led the Brentwood Police Department since March 2018 after retiring as a major from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, allegedly dismissed the harassment allegations as “horseplay” and told Hawkins to develop a thicker skin, per the lawsuit. First Alert 4 reported that it reached out to Brentwood police for comment but had not received a response as of publication.
This is not the department's first brush with internal misconduct scrutiny. In May 2019, internal affairs records showed a veteran Brentwood officer spent hours on duty making sexually explicit videos on his phone, and Chief Spiess sustained misconduct allegations against him, according to KSDK. In October 2021, Spiess and several Brentwood officers were also named as defendants in a federal civil rights lawsuit tied to a 2018 multi-agency shooting involving a Black passenger in St. Louis County, as reported by Black Star News.
A Small Department, A Small Suburb
Brentwood's police department operates with an authorized staff of just 27 officers, a scale that means workplace isolation or altered assignments can carry outsized consequences for an individual officer within the tight-knit corps. The inner-ring St. Louis County suburb has a population of roughly 8,100 residents, with African Americans making up about 8% of the city's population and 15% of full-time municipal staff, according to city demographic data. Brentwood is one of nearly 90 municipalities in St. Louis County that each maintain independent police forces, a fragmented regional structure noted on Wikipedia.
Hawkins is seeking $100,000 in damages from the City of Brentwood. Under Missouri's Human Rights Act, state employment discrimination claims are subject to a strict administrative process, including a 180-day filing window with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights and a “motivating factor” standard requiring plaintiffs to show a protected trait directly drove the adverse action rather than merely contributing to it, according to legal guidance published by Barrett & Farahany. Separate state law caps combined non-economic and punitive damages at $50,000 for employers with 6 to 100 employees, per Martin Pringle Attorneys at Law. It remains unclear whether Hawkins has also pursued a parallel complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which allows a longer 300-day filing window under Title VII, or whether the city's human resources department has launched any independent review of the allegations separate from the police department's own internal affairs process.
