EX-SIMI OFFICER TESTIFIES; LAWSUIT PLAINTIFF SAYS HOSTILE WORK CONDITIONS MADE HER QUIT.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

Culminating a six-year legal battle with the Simi Valley Police Department, former Officer Debbra J. Accardi is testifying this week that insults, pranks and other forms of sexual harassment created a hostile work atmosphere that forced her to resign.

But the attorney representing the city of Simi Valley, a former police chief, three officers and a city risk manager maintains that Accardi herself is responsible for ending her 11-year law enforcement career after she was unable to recover from a job-related knee injury three years earlier.

During testimony Wednesday, Accardi said she was forced to resign in 1991 when the department gave her an ultimatum: Declare yourself 100 percent fit for duty or file for early retirement, even though Accardi claims she was ineligible because the injury was not considered severe enough.

Accardi said she was so devastated by the job loss that she sought workers' compensation disability for stress and sued the city and several officers in 1992 for an unspecified amount of lost wages and emotional distress.

``I was an emotional wreck,'' she told jurors. ``I was in a very distraught position and I can say, looking back at that time period, I couldn't tell what was up or down.''

The case has made its way through the Ventura Superior Courts and the state Court of Appeal since Accardi filed her lawsuit, claiming sexual harassment and discrimination forced her from her job.

Accardi, now a 46-year-old paralegal living in Thousand Oaks, twice has been dealt legal setbacks that nearly ended her suit.

In 1992, a Ventura Superior Court judge dismissed the case after the city argued, in part, that Accardi's claim didn't state legal grounds for sexual harassment. The appellate court reinstated the lawsuit a year later.

In 1996, a second Ventura Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that Accardi couldn't meet the burden of proof for wrongful termination.

But Accardi and her attorney, William Rehwald, persisted, and their second go at a trial opened Tuesday with the plaintiff explaining the alleged pattern of harassment.

Accardi told jurors she was falsely accused of failing to come to a fellow officer's aid, subjected to other harmful rumors and burdened with unfavorable work assignments.

Fellow detectives once told her to go home because her help was not needed, she said. As a rookie, she said, someone put a wad of paper in her shotgun, which could have caused the weapon to explode in her face had she fired it.

Told she ``wasn't a real cop,'' Accardi said she complained to then-Lt. Mark Layhew, who allegedly told her to get used to the department's double standard toward female officers, Rehwald said.

Layhew, now a police captain, is a defendant in the lawsuit, as are Capts. Richard Wright and Anthony Harper III. Also named as defendants are former Police Chief Paul Miller (now a Simi Valley city councilman) and city risk manager James Bartholomew.

Accardi also said Wednesday that she was offended when her supervisor, then-Sgt. Harper, expressed concern about having two female officers work as partners in the field.

Accardi said she interpreted this as a sign of gender bias: ``It was saying that we didn't have the ability to handle ourselves as other officers did.''

``He had religious beliefs that he more than once mentioned to me, that women were meant to be married and having children and shouldn't be in the workplace,'' she said.

The department now has six female officers and 110 male officers, said Sgt. Bob Gardner. The department's civilian work force is made up of 51 women and nine men.

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PHOTO (Color) Former Simi Valley police Officer Debbra Accardi testifies Wednesday in her suit against the city and Police Department.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News